Love

Ki Tavo - My Mothers and Father Were Wandering Arameans

By: 
Rabbi Shohama Harris Wiener

Ki Tavo- My Mothers and Father Were Wandering Arameans

People are always asking me about my background. “Where did you grow up? What were your parents like? Were they religious?” It seems to be part of a getting-to-know-you ritual. This sense that roots matters seems to be programmed into us, like a spiritually genetic piece of DNA. Judaism understands this well: in fact it commands us to remember our origins—in our daily prayers, in our Shabbat and holiday prayers, and through our rituals.

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Va-Etchanan - Unending Love

By: 
Rabbi Shohama Harris Wiener

This Shabbat we begin the cycle of love; seven special Torah readings leading up to our New Year, Rosh
HaShannah, seven weeks in which we open to the experience of G-d’s love for us, and G-d’s yearning to have us draw closer.

This week we also commemorated the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, Tisha B’Av, which marks the destruction of the First and Second Temple, as well as other tragedies for the Jewish people.

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Yitro - A Revelation of Love

By: 
Rabbi Shohama Harris Wiener

It was 1978, and I was tormented by an internal dilemma. Both daughters had chosen on their own to prepare for Bat Mitzvah, and I, I did not know why. Nothing in my Jewish upbringing had given me an answer to the fundamental question—why be Jewish. No experience in synagogue had given me a clue as to why the rituals and rites of reading Torah compelled Jews to pass this on, generation to generation, for over three thousand years.

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