Rabbi Cohen’s Writings

Dear Friends, I hope your Thanksgiving was filled with family, friends, good food, and, most importantly, time to step back and recognize the blessings that fill our lives. This week’s Torah portion brings us into one of the most vulnerable moments of Jacob’s life. Having deceived Esau, Jacob [...]

Dear Friends, This week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, carries a surprising name. It means “The Life of Sarah,” yet it opens not with Sarah’s life, but with her death: “Sarah’s lifetime, the span of Sarah’s life, came to one hundred and twenty-seven years. Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in [...]

Dear Friends, This week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, tells the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. You remember the story: two cities so corrupt that neighbors no longer treated one another as neighbors, and strangers were met not with kindness but with cruelty. Their moral decay was so complete that, [...]

Dear Friends, Today is obviously Halloween—a pagan holiday that focuses on spirits and superstitions. Halloween has never been a Jewish observance, and it is worth noting that the early Reform rabbis, products of the Enlightenment, wanted nothing to do with spirits and superstition. They were rationalists and sought [...]