Jewish Relationships Initiative

Blog

  • Shabbat Shalom and Chag Pesach Sameach

    Passover 613 style

    and Shabbat Shalom

  • Shabbat Shalom

    Welcoming Shabbat with a bissel Yiddish and Woodie Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land

    Shabbat Shalom

     

  • Al HaNissim and Shabbat Shalom

    We share Al HaNissim for Purim (and Channukah too!) acknowledging with gratitude the miracles we’ve experienced.  Thanks to Six13 for this great music.

    Wishing everyone safety and health this Purim and Shabbat, and may all of us receive the blessings of a vaccination soon!

    Shabbat Shalom!

  • Shabbat Shalom

    Chazzan Azi Schwartz sings Mi Khamokha as we welcome Shabbat.

    Shabbat Shalom

     

  • Shabbat Shalom

    Shabbat Shalom

  • Shabbat Shalom

    Redemption Song.  Stephen Marley performs one of his father’s most important songs.

    Shabbat Shalom.

  • Shabbat Shalom

    Ein Od

    A beautiful composition by Yosef Goldman performed at Germantown Jewish Center to help create the mood for Shabbat.  The lyrics, based on our texts and prayer, understand that there is no other but God.  Ein Od.

    Shabbat Shalom.

  • To Mom, Zichronah Livracha- a toast with Chocolate Milk

    A small gathering of family said goodbye to the matriarch this past Sunday.  Adult children and wives, adult grandchildren, and a “bun in the oven.”  I was asked to officiate because that is what the family believed mom would have wanted.  They and their mother understood themselves in a humanist way, but they believed it was the appropriate honor for mom- to bury her Jewishly.  The boys never had a chance to have this conversation with her as she had dementia that ravaged her by the end.

    I did my best to honor her and those who were trying to honor their mother by weaving rituals with stories that each family member was eager to share and reluctant to stop.  This beautiful family time ended by raising a glass of chocolate milk, mom’s favorite drink, toasting her life and the family that is her legacy.

    As I was preparing to leave, the sons presented me with the replica Torah Scrolls given to each of them by the rabbi from their Bar Mitzvah.  They found them among the few possessions mom brought with her to the care facility.

    May her life be for a blessing.

  • Shabbat Shalom

    I share the wonderful rendition of Amazing Grace performed by Garth Brooks at the Inauguration.

    This beautiful song is for all of us.  There was a time when Jews avoided this piece because of historic frictions.   But if we are brave enough, we can embrace the power, beauty, and majesty of the music as we march forward with all our brothers and sisters in love.

    Shabbat Shalom

  • Our Country, May it Be

    Inspiration and ideals in familiar music, as befitting the inauguration of our 46th president.  A prayer in a song for our country