Rabbi Bruce's Reflections on Life

  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