Rabbi Arthur Weiner

This Shabbat, Rabbi Avram Kogen begins his seventeenth year of service to our congregation. It is a remarkable milestone, and one that deserves our gratitude and recognition. In thinking about this anniversary, I was reminded of a well-known piece of Jewish gematria , or numerology. The Hebrew word tov —good—has a numerical value of seventeen. I am not one to place much weight on gematria . Most of the time, I view it as nonsense.   Occasionally, I regard it as an interesting curiosity (and that is being generous) rather than a source of profound insight. But every now and then, a numerical coincidence feels exactly right. This is one of those times. For during his entire tenure with us, now entering his seventeenth year, Rabbi Kogen has brought an abundance of tov to our congregation. Good judgment. Good scholarship. Good friendship. Good counsel. Good humor. Good Torah. Good leadership.              ...

This week, I found myself thinking about a tragic story that recently concluded in a Texas courtroom. For those unfamiliar with the case, a brief summary can be found here . Last April, at a high school track meet, a severe storm forced hundreds of students to seek shelter from the rain. A seventeen-year-old student found his way to a tent that belonged to another school. What began as a dispute over space escalated into an argument. The argument became a confrontation. The confrontation became violent. One teenager shoved a student. The other responded by pulling out a knife and stabbing him in the chest. A young man lost his life. Another young man was recently sentenced to decades in prison. As is often the case in America, the story quickly became entangled in debates about race, politics, self-defense, and social justice. Commentators rushed to fit the tragedy into familiar ideological categories. Yet before any of those larger questions, I found myself troubled by something m...

I just returned from a week in Israel. This was my 14th visit to Israel since 1978, not including the year I lived in Israel while a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1984-1985. This was not a "regular trip," filled with visits to our sacred sites like the Western Wall and other places of ancient or historical significance, or simply touring the breadth and beauty of our Jewish homeland. We traveled to attend the wedding of our nephew and to participate in all the festivities and celebrations. It was a time to relax, spend time with family, and simply enjoy being in Israel. This was my first visit to Israel since January of 2024, when I participated in a special Rabbinic mission in the aftermath of the horrible events of October 7th. When I returned from that important but difficult trip, I wrote to the congregation that, to my great surprise, despite all that Israel had endured in the three months before we arrived, life went on. Even with the difficult fight...

This week brought major news about the Gateway Project, the massive undertaking to modernize and expand the rail infrastructure between New Jersey and Manhattan. For those of us who live in this part of the world, this is hardly an abstract policy discussion. It is deeply personal. It is about children and grandchildren commuting to work, family members sitting on delayed NJ Transit trains, and the familiar frustration of hearing about signal problems, tunnel congestion, or yet another inexplicable delay somewhere between Secaucus and Penn Station. When completed, the Gateway Project promises something genuinely transformative: increased rail capacity, far greater reliability, and modernization of one of the most fragile transportation chokepoints in the United States. And yet there is one sobering reality: the full project will take another 20 years to complete. Some reading this Shabbat message may never see its final completion. That naturally raises a question. Why undertake ...

There is a famous story about an emperor who was convinced he was wearing magnificent clothes, when in fact, he was wearing nothing at all. Everyone around him saw the truth, but no one dared to say it. Why? Because they didn’t want to look foolish. They didn’t want to stand apart. They didn’t want to challenge what everyone else was pretending to believe. Until a child spoke up. The emperor isn’t just in the parade anymore. He’s on the red carpet. Looking at some of today’s most high-profile public events and awards shows, whether the recent Met Gala, the Cannes Film Festival, the Grammy Awards or Academy Awards, it’s hard not to feel like we are watching a modern version of that story unfold. Many of the outfits worn by celebrities (and let's tell the truth—we are talking about women’s clothing, or actually, lack thereof) are designed to shock, to reveal, to push boundaries, often leaving very little to the imagination. At a certain point, this isn’t fashion. It’s…something...

This week, I traveled to Washington DC for the 5th Annual Zionist Rabbinic Coalition (ZRC) conference. Of all the various rabbinical organizations with which I am involved, this one has become the most significant and important one to me. The ZRC was formed in 2021 at the urging of then Ambassador of Israel to the United States Ron Dermer, who expressed concern about a growing drift away from traditional Rabbinical support to Israel. Sadly, this is something that I also had witnessed over the past several decades. Today, the ZRC is a network of over 2000 Rabbis representing Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, as well as non-denominational Rabbis from across the United States. We are the independent, multi-denominational, and non-partisan collective voice of Zionist Rabbis. Another important feature of our work is actively combating antisemitism, especially when it masquerades and manifests in the form of anti-Zionism. Through our growing Rabbinic network, advocacy on Capitol Hill, partners...