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...