Weekly D’var Torah
from Rabbi Misha Shulman
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by Rabbi Misha
The night I was born, my parents, young North American Jews who had made Aliyah less than a decade earlier, walked to the Western Wall.
by Rabbi Misha
The month of Elul began on Sunday, inviting us to take stock of our lives, the year that past and the present moment. As always, each of us has a lot to think about personally, where we’ve strayed, where we’ve gone wrong, where we want to improve and where we can return to ourselves.
by Rabbi Misha
A friend told me this week that he walks 12,000 steps every day. I don't walk around with my phone on me much of the time so I have no idea how many steps I take. But since I was curious, I started counting my steps.
by Rabbi Misha
Ten days ago I was talking with Shai and Monica, two fellow New Shuler Israelis living in New York. Naturally, we got to talking politics. But I noticed that it was primarily a conversation between Monica and me.
by Rabbi Misha
I once asked Erika’s teacher, Ray Deal, a traditional medicine man from the Navajo nation whether his tradition has a Sabbath. “We don’t differentiate,” he answered, “all days are sacred.” I remembered this conversation this morning when I woke up with the phrase “the sacred-everyday.”
by Rabbi Misha
There is only one person I’ve ever met who could quite literally make a room full of people fly. I understand your skepticism. I had it too once. It vanished one Monday afternoon in the early 2010’s in a yoga studio in Chelsea, when I saw Rabbi Burt Siegel do it.
by Rabbi Misha
This week we lost my dear friend and teacher Rabbi Burt Siegel. As I've been collecting my thoughts to share with you about Rabbi Burt, I’ve been reminded several times of another great teacher, the wonderful Rabbi Laurie Phillips z”l, who ran Beineinu with Daphna until she passed at age 55 in 2023.
by Rabbi Misha
It took some serious manuevering, many hours spent on internet travel websites, days of worry and stress and a bucket of luck or divine support, but I landed in Ben Gurion airport a few days ago. I write to you from what was my early childhood bedroom and is now my father's study, with the familiar view of olive trees, bougainvilleas and houses built from old Jerusalem stone.
by Rabbi Misha
This Is What You Shall Do, from the Walt Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass.
by Rabbi Misha
This week made me reflect on the all-to-human experience of feeling unseen.
by Rabbi Misha
Before I start, let me wish all of your loved ones in countries at war safety. We have in our community people with family in both Israel and Iran, and we wish them all well in this scary moment.
by Rabbi Misha
We have transitioned into a new stage of insanity in the Middle East. In my overwhelming concern for my loved ones back home I turn to our biblical book of wisdom, Proverbs, that says: “צדקה תציל ממוות” “charity saves from death.”
by Rabbi Misha
At 1:45am I lost myself in dance along with every other smiling, happy person in the theater. Mualem, the Moroccan master of Saha Gnawa was singing, and the band was hot. It was impossible to stay seated.
by Rabbi Misha
Before we received the Torah at Mount Sinai, our ancestors had three days to prepare. We’re in those three days prior to our Shavuot celebration, but the truth is this whole week was full, all-consuming preparation for our festival.
by Rabbi Misha
We have a week and change until our Kumah Festival, and the excitement among the team is palpable. What began as an idea to pick up the trodden spirits has taken form as a celebratory night of unity and beauty in the face of brutality and division.
by Rabbi Misha
This morning a disagreement broke out in the little minyan where I daven on Friday mornings. We had just finished the Amidah and the cantor called out: “Page 62!” One person called out: “No Tachanun today!”
by Rabbi Misha
This week I was asked for some prayers that can be spoken before a person departs this world.
by Rabbi Misha
One of the great mysteries of our time is the ability of enormous numbers of people to shut down their own capacity to feel compassion.
by Rabbi Misha
The moment of silence observed during Yom Hashoah ceremonies has a way of cutting through the noise around the topic of Holocaust remembrance, and into the purpose of the day.
by Rabbi Misha
The most liberating experience I had this Passover was hearing an artist talk about time. “We have to bring the past into balance,” she said.
by Rabbi Misha
On April 19, 1999, about 30 people sat in a Greenwich Village living room and decided to form a shul.
by Rabbi Misha
Monday night I found myself unable to sleep, sitting with this psalm. In the morning, when I woke up, I saw the terrible news about Israel’s renewed attacks.
by Rabbi Misha
On January 29th, I got an email from my neighbor, Julie, on my block’s email chain titled "Give a Damn, you're invited."
by Rabbi Misha
Yesterday a few people saw my name in the NY Times in print so tiny that the page could contain all 350 rabbis who signed an add titled “Jews say no to ethnic cleansing.”
by Rabbi Misha
It appears as though a shift has happened. Everyone I speak to is looking for the right way to act, to respond, to not respond. The old playbook doesn’t feel right. What we did in the past isn’t working. How we thought about the world was off. Though the work hasn’t changed, the methods may need to.
by Rabbi Misha
I've been sitting with my rabbi, Jim Ponet, and another of my rebbes, Elana Ponet for the last couple of hours studying Torah and discussing this moment politically, in an attempt to figure out what should go in this letter.