Rabbi Arthur Weiner

Among the most important and watched primaries of this electoral season is the California Senate primary, which will take place on March 5. This primary will help to determine the next senator from California, assuming the office long occupied by the late Senator Dianne Feinstein.    There’s a lot riding on this primary, and a great deal of attention and money has flowed to the various candidates on both the Democratic and Republican side.  There are serious issues for the people of California to consider, and no clear favorites have emerged just yet.   The Republican race is a particularly close one, pitting businessman and attorney Eric Early against former baseball star Steve Garvey , a 10-time All-Star, who also holds the National League record for consecutive games played (1,207).  Recently, Reverend Jack Hibbs, the pastor of the Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino California, delivered a sermon during which he urged his congregation to support Steve...

After 26 years as Cantor of the JCCP/CBT, and having been named Cantor Emeritus at his retirement last June in recognition of his unique contributions to our synagogue, Cantor Sam and Raisy Weiss will leave the community and relocate to New York City next week.   Before they go, I would like to offer one last tribute. The role of a Cantor is a unique one. Sometimes that role is to be a teacher, other times a scholar or a mentor, all while striving to create an experience of communal prayer that is enriching to all. Whether it was through his beautiful davening , his training of hundreds of B’nai Mitzvah , the esteem he enjoys among his colleagues, or his mastery of the Jewish tradition, Cantor Weiss found ways to help us give expression to the voices in our own Jewish hearts. For 26 years in our congregation, he set high standards for himself, and for our congregation, always striving to find the right blend between the old and the new, between traditional nusach and mel...

This Shabbat falls right in the middle of Black History Month.   I want to say something about the single most important and influential institution in the Black community: the Black church. And there’s a reason why I want to speak to it today, as we prepare for this Shabbat, when the Torah reading is Parshat Terumah . According to the historian Henry Louis Gates, Black churches were the first institutions built by Black people and run independent of white society in America.   The earliest Black Christian churches were founded around the time of the Declaration of Independence.  Professor Gates writes “the black church is an exemplar of what is possible when we, the people, assemble and march in the name of a higher power.  For a people systematically brutalized and debased by the inhumane system of human slavery, followed by a century of Jim Crow racism, the church provided a refuge: a place of racial and individual self ‑ affirmation, of teaching and ...