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Rabbi's Week in Review - 4/23/2024

04/23/2024 02:16:06 PM

Apr23

For this week of Passover, Fay and I wish everyone a Zissen Pesach. Take time this week for the sweetness of the holiday. Let it fortify us for the sacred work ahead to seek a more just world.

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Rabbi's Week in Review - 4/15/2024

04/15/2024 03:09:06 PM

Apr15

I was involved in a roundtable last week as part of KCPT Channel 19’s “Flatland in Focus” program. The program was one of the events commemorating the 10th anniversary of the murders at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom. On the panel was Mindy Corporon, the founder of the SevenDays nonprofit organization promoting kindness and understanding, and the mother and daughter, respectively, of Reat Underwood and Dr. William...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 4/8/2024

04/08/2024 04:50:54 PM

Apr8

This past week was a week for music, both within Kol Ami and out in the broader community.  

While not really new at all to our Kol Ami family, Karen Engebretson has officially become our director of music. While our music is always special, and I/we have been blessed with music directors both highly competent and caring — most recently Lara Steinel, and when I first got the pulpit, Patrick Buckley — both the beauty of...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 4/1/2024

04/01/2024 03:25:35 PM

Apr1

Fay and I saw a wonderful movie last week, The Taste of Things. A gourmet, Dodin, and his cook, Eugenie, develop a beautiful romance over 20 years, with food being at the center of their lives. The dialogue is sparse, but it is the sounds made in the cooking involved and the spectacular meals (extravaganzas involving many, many courses) that take center stage in the film.

While we longed for smell-a-vision, as well as just a taste of...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 3/25/2026

03/25/2024 01:59:52 PM

Mar25

In the past week, there have been a number of articles showing up regarding both the state of Judaism and the state of our world. It is the changing nature of both that caught my attention.  

As to Judaism, it is the suggestion by Noah Feldman that Judaism, particularly with younger Jews, is leaning away from the nationalism represented by our attachment to Israel and toward a more personalized, spiritual attachment to...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 3/18/2024

03/18/2024 12:40:40 PM

Mar18

Last week, Fay and I attended another of the Trailblazing Talks, the speaker series at the Kauffman Center, this one titled “From Sandlots to Stadiums.” The featured presenter was sports photographer Jean Fruth. This followed the previous week’s program presented by the Jewish Experiences program through The J and Jewish Federation, featuring the great sports (and particularly baseball) writer Joe Posnanski. The program took place at...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 3/11/2024

03/11/2024 01:07:44 PM

Mar11

I came across an article Sunday from The Washington Post, really an excerpt from the book To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to G-d, Israel, and the Jewish People, by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman. The very, very short point of the article is that we are a loving yet sometimes dysfunctional family. According to Feldman, this is the basis for the present acrimony within the Jewish community toward the Israel-Palestine...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 3/4/2024

03/04/2024 04:08:51 PM

Mar4

This past Shabbat morning, a group of us Kol Ami-nicks got up at the crack of dawn and headed to our state capital of Jefferson City. We celebrated Shabbat together and then, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel z”l said, we prayed with our feet. As part of a kickoff event for the Poor People’s Campaign, we held a rally in the rotunda of the Capitol.  

This was a kickoff to an effort of the next weeks and months to register...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 2/27/2024

02/27/2024 09:49:50 AM

Feb27

Fay and I were in New York over the weekend. We had a wonderful time being with family and friends, seeing great theater and art, and eating way too much. We saw an interesting exhibit at the Jewish Museum by Argentine artist Marta Minujin. She is known for her soft sculptures, performance art and happenings.

The write-up on the exhibit indicated that she is Jewish. There was nothing in the exhibit, however, that would strike one as...Read more...

Rabbi's Week in Review - 2/19/2024

02/19/2024 03:29:49 PM

Feb19

For the next couple of weeks, I will be providing information on an important event taking place March 2 in Jefferson City, Mo. I would be more than remiss, however, if I did not make some mention of the horrific shooting that took place at the end of the Chiefs Super Bowl celebration.

I, like many with whom I have spoken, have feelings of both sadness and anger. Sadness over life lost and lives irreparably changed for worse, due to...Read more...

Sat, April 27 2024 19 Nisan 5784