Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

I’m writing this after receiving an antidote to a stressful week — really as much a reminder or a refresher course, if you will.

The stress came from both schedule management (or, a more accurate descriptor, my great challenge in managing my schedule) and the politics of the week. Leaving aside the former, which is a constant and is not going to change anytime soon, the latter came from the dysfunction on display in the House of Representatives, and the obvious lust for power without showing any concern to improve the welfare of everyday Americans. It is emblematic of a failed ability to be in meaningful relationship. Everything is transactional, self-serving and selfish.

The refresher course came from CBS Sunday Morning. It was a story on the key to happiness. After decades of tracking people’s lives and what creates happiness over the long term, it is (drumroll, please) relationships. Through meaningful connection to others in our lives, we create lives of meaning and purpose. There was another story about a massive sculpture being installed in Boston titled “Embrace” — a sculpture with a message of racial justice but, at its core, about the love between the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

Not quite sure why I needed the reminder right now. After all, relationship is my most oft-repeated word. (Just ask poor Fay.)  My thesis in my rabbinical program was on “Prayer as a Model for Relationship.” But I think we always need to be reminded and be reintroduced to our core values.

As we embark on the secular year 2023, It is our hope at Kol Ami to reconnect to our core values — values of caring, of community healing, and of engaging and lifting up the marginalized, both within our Kol Ami family and in the community beyond. By connecting to those values, we connect to each other and, through that, create the potential for long-term happiness for more and more people.