Rabbi Bruce's Reflections on Life

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...

 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 bui...

  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 stre...