Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

A couple of snippets for this week’s blog. Last week, KCMO City Councilman Nathan Willett put forth a resolution ostensibly to fight antisemitism. Thankfully, it was defeated by the City Council. 

Recently, there has been a spate of politicians doing performative politics in their disingenuous concern about antisemitism. Willett, like Elise Stefanik and Michael Johnson et al., are now all about antisemitism. Yet their silence...Read more...

Amidst the continuing sadness and acrimony surrounding the violence in Gaza, and the failure of  leadership on all sides to end the war, I continue to try and connect with those seeking an alternative that will lead to peace and justice — while also holding on to the positive and uplifting trends in our Kol Ami community.

This past Friday, we celebrated Shabbat with our Shabbat Shulchan informal service, followed by Shabbat...Read more...

I have always looked forward to celebrating Pesach. While the holiday is Torah-based, the seder is really a product of the Rabbinic and Geonic periods. Which is to say, it is ripe for good discussion and healthy argument — Machloket L’Shem Shamayim, Argument for the Sake of Heaven.

Yet I came into this year’s Passover feeling down, and concerned as to what was an appropriate way to celebrate — or even if it was appropriate to...Read more...

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...

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...