A Rabbi’s Devotional Reading of The Quran.

A Devar Jonah Conversation Ari.A Alpern (This version is set up to start a conversation) A salam Ah laykum.  Shalom A lay chem, Peace be Upon You. And upon you Peace. Welcome to our devotional conversation on the Quran. We will read and recite together, from “The...

Bar Mitzvah Boy Syndrome

Bar Mitzvah Boy Syndrome? Yes.Time To Grow Up   Time magazine the late spring of 2011 asks: Sex, Lies, and Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly? Why is it that the higher one rises in a power hierarchy the more likely they are to commit indiscretions?...

Beyond Sunday School

Beyond Sunday School: A Call to the Children of Israel.  If you, like many, stopped your spiritual education at age 13 or 12, you may see the world like an adolescent. Similar to The High Priest Aaron, of blessed memory, modern rabbis are not able to prevent the dance...

My Dream

My “I Have a Dream Speech”  of Shabbat Shalom ( In memory of Rabbi Edwin H. Friedman ) Rabbi Friedman of blessed memory is my main rabbinic mentor. In his final book, A Failure of Nerve, the good rabbi challenges each of us to have our own “I have a dream speech.”...

Be a Baal Shem Tov

A:  Mastering the Final Name. Be a Baal Shem Tov A Review  Say A, The Final Name, or Ah, as in say Ah Aleph God   In A Beginning   add lamed say Ale, or A lah Plural of majesty Al o heam, not L o him in A Beginning creating continuously, in your goodness Ma ah say B...

Supreme Fiction

On Reading Wallace Stevens with Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary  Poetic allusion must be “recognizable not only to a coterie of poets and gentlemen scholars, but to a whole culture as well.” John Hollander   My diction is ary Sitting pretty upon...