Rabbi Steven Moskowitz

When preparing for funerals I often share with families that it is impossible to adequately capture a person’s spirit and character in a few, well-chosen words, sentences and paragraphs. Eulogies are imperfect. Although important, they are inadequate representations of people’s lives. No life can be perfectly summarized. No life can be encapsulated in poetry or prose. I recall this sentiment at this moment as I reflect on the memories of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. For very few, if any, was a eulogy recited. No prayers were chanted. In fact, we recall them en masse and as a single memory. “The six million!” we intone. Their individuality, their unique character traits, the large things around which their lives turned and the small things that only their families and friends knew, and perhaps loved, are forgotten. Such sentiments have never been recorded in even the briefest of eulogies. “I remember when Sarah…. I recall when Jacob…” are words that were

In her recent article, “What I Miss Most is Swimming,” Bonnie Tsui writes: There’s a poignancy to being a swimmer now, in that we’re not able to do it just when we need it most. But even though public pools are closed and we are limited in the wild places where we can swim, thinking about immersion in our favorite watering holes is still a balm. As the writer Heather Hansman pointed out to me recently, there is value in those places even (and especially) when we’re not in them — it’s what Wallace Stegner called “the geography of hope.” I have been thinking about how we create such a geography of hope when we are trapped inside. (And when I cannot even swim in the chlorinated pools of our local gyms or locate the soothing balm of the ocean’s waves.). And so, I do what I often do, and lean on the ancient rabbis who even though they lived thousands of years ago, remain my teachers and guides. Living at a time when their beloved Temple was destroyed and they were exiled from the holy ci

According to Jewish tradition, the Book of Kohelet was written by King Solomon when he was an older man. It offers a melancholy appraisal of life, suggesting that we are fated to bounce back and forth between highs and lows. Solomon laments: A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven: a time for being born and a time for dying, a time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted; a time for slaying and a time for healing, a time for tearing down and a time for building up; a time for weeping and a time for laughing, a time for wailing and a time for dancing; a time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones, a time for embracing and a time for shunning embraces; a time for seeking and a time for losing, a time for keeping and a time for discarding; a time for ripping and a time for sewing, A time for silence and a time for speaking; a time for loving and a time for hating; a time for war and a time for peace. (Kohelet 3) Kohelet offers a

The Baal Shem Tov, who founded the Hasidic movement in eighteenth century Ukraine, approached the world in a unique way. Once, there was a terrible disease outbreak in Mezibush. Men, women and children were falling ill to this rampant disease. It spread like wildfire throughout the community. At its worst, there was not a single home in which there was not at least one ill family member. Out of desperation, and great faith in the Baal Shem Tov’s healing powers, the community leaders turned to their rabbi and asked him to pray on their behalf. They begged him to pray that the plague might vanish from their midst. The Baal Shem Tov responded that their fate was instead in their hands. It was up to them to vanquish this disease. His prayers could not replace their prayers. His actions could not substitute for their actions. And so, the Baal Shem Tov instructed them that the solution to their travails was that the entire community, that each and every member, participate in the mitz