Rabbi Bruce's Reflections on Life

 Dear Friends, As I write this I am celebrating Shabbat  at Temple Kol Ami in Ft. Mill, South  Carolina. Last night I shared my favorite story  about Elijah the Prophet.  We know that Elijah is renowned to wear disguises.  In the story I shared, he shows up to a celebration  dressed like a beggar and asks to join them.  They turn him away and so he changes into fancy clothes and returns.  Once again he asks if he can join them and they welcome him warmly.  He is invited to sit at the head table and is treated like royalty.  They bring him wine, food, drink and extend the warmest hospitality.  As he receives all the food and drinks, he takes them and puts them into and on to his clothes.  The hosts accept his eccentric behavior because he is dressed nicely and they assume he is important. When he finally excuses himself to clean up, he returns dressed once again as a beggar.   Needless to say, everyone is confused and they ask him what is going on.  He explains that he is the same perso

Dear Friends, I promised that I would write another blog about our recent George Mason University trip to Poland.  There will be more coming as I continue to sort out my thoughts and feelings. We call this Shabbat, Shabbat Zachor, which means remember.  We remember Amalek who did nasty things to our ancestors in Biblical times.  In the midst of reading this brief Biblical portion from Deuteronomy 25:17-19.  we remember him and we are also taught to blot out his memory. Tonight and tomorrow when we read the Megillah(Scroll) of Esther, we shake a noise maker, (grogger) whenever we mention the name of Haman who is the person who wants to put to death the Jewish people in order to blot out his name during the time of Queen Esther.  He does not succeed because we remember what he did and blot out his name. I want to devote this blog to a couple of memories that I will always carry with me from the trip that are important for me to share. I will remember the following artist, (please do some

 Dear Friends, I will be writing two blogs about our recent trip to Poland with college students from George Mason University. This week in our scriptural reading, we read from the conclusion of the book of Exodus.  We read about many of the details about the construction of the holy Tabernacle that our ancestors built in the wilderness.. One of the items that we read about during the last parts of Exodus, is the construction of the clasps that held things together.  I am intrigued by what helps anything holy stay together. While we were in Poland and were visiting the sites of the Warsaw Ghetto, the villa and zoo in Warsaw which is described in the book and movie, "The Zookeeper's Wife,", Treblinka,  the Lublin Yeshiva (place of study), the Grodzka gate, Majdanek, Auschwitz/Birkenau, the Labyrinth, Plaszow, Schindler's factory, Kashmierz, and the Krakow ghetto.  As you can see we saw many things. What does this have to do with clasps that our ancestors built as part

  Dear Friends, As I prepare to leave for Poland tomorrow with some of you reading this,  I want to share a beautiful story I heard from Rabbi Rachel Hersh from the Jewish Social Services Agency at a recent meeting.  She did not think it was original with her and someone suggested it may be from Rami Shapiro. If you know the source, please let me know. Rabbi Rachel described a midrash or interpretation that when Moses asks  G-d if he can see the Divine Face, G-d says that the Divine Face is in every human being.  So we see G-d when we see each other as human beings. I hope that our students will learn that we are all human and that all of us have a spark of the Divine in us.  What we do with that spark is up to us. May all of us recognize our divinity and the divinity of others as we strive to create a more peaceful, understanding world.  As Bezalel was chosen to help craft the portable Tabernacle in our scriptural reading, may we all use our strengths, our spark of the Divine, and our

  Dear Friends and Family, Recently Sue and I attended a concert where Jim Croce's son played some of his own and some of his father's music.  As many of you know I am turning 70 in May  and am wrestling with this significant birthday.  As we listened to "Time in a Bottle" (see lyrics below), I continued to think about turning 70 and the passage of time..   One of my love languages is quality  time and I believe that the greatest gift we can give someone is the gift of time together.  Time is precious and I believe that as we recently  read the Biblical portion of Terumah (gift offering) and are currently reading about the construction of the portable tabernacle our ancestors carried with them in the wilderness, that we need to remember our time in this world is limited. What are we doing to give each other the gift of  our time?  We promised during the height of the pandemic, that we would be in touch with people about whom we cared because we couldn't see them d

  Dear Friends and Family, As we just returned from attending weekly services during the week in which we read about the giving of the 10 Commandments I thought I would write about what revelation means to me.  Our ancestors experienced their revelation in the midst of thunder and lightning.  Yehuda Amichai, a famous Israeli poet in his poem, "My Parents Lodging Place" wrote about a gentler revelation. My father was God and didn't know it. He gave me the Ten Commandments not in thunder and not in anger, not in fire and not in a cloud, but gently and with love. He added caresses and tender words, "would you" and "please." And chanted "remember" and "keep" with the same tune, and pleaded and wept quietly between one commandment and the next: Thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord in vain, shalt not take, not in vain, please don't bear false witness against your neighbor. And he hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, Thou shalt