Author: Rabbi Eric M. Rosin

There are many profound gifts that flow from growing up with a parent who is a doctor. The fact that my father is an anesthesiologist helped me to feel safer as an asthmatic child. I knew that he helped people breath during operations at the hospital, and so I knew that he would help me breathe when my wheezing got louder and it began to…

Last Monday, I used my day off to travel to New York City. As I walked up the stairs out of the subway and enjoyed my first glimpse of the New York skyline against the gray winter sky I was reminded of the old joke: One man stops another on the streets of New York and asks, “Excuse me, sir, how do you get to…

While of course the Hebrew Bible is the central story of the Jewish people, the richness of our tradition and of our essence stems from the fact that we read it as a foundational text supporting a framework woven through with all of the other stories that we have written and discovered and learned and lived since our tradition tells us that God gave the…

I’m getting married this spring. If you speak to my parents, my friends or my congregants, it’s about time. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said that it’s long past time. For years I have been serving the families of my community wondering if I will ever have a family of my own, and to be honest, I had…

There is a wonderful story in a collection of teachings by Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Efrayim (1748-1800). In this story, the rabbi describes a village musician of such prodigious talent that whenever he enters into the town square, picks up his instrument and begins to play, anyone within earshot is immediately inspired to dance with joy, jumping into the air and spinning exuberantly in the Hasidic…

There is an old story about two very competitive classmates at an Ivy League college. For four years they jockey with each other to see who can get better grades, lead more organizations and collect more invitations to various parties and societies. As often happens, even though so much of their college careers are defined by their relationship to each other, soon after graduation they…

Last month, I wrote that during the Jewish Holidays I would not charge my community with the mission to find answers, instead I would exhort them to spend the next year asking good questions. Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur have now passed and this week, as if to underline my request, we are about to embark upon the Jewish Festival of Sukkot. To quote that…

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that one of the reasons that Isadore Rabi, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, entered the field of physics is that each day when he returned home from school as a child, instead of asking him what he had learned in class as his friends’ parents did, Professor Rabi’s Jewish mother inquired instead, “Izzy, did you ask a good question today?” Judaism…

Earlier this year, Hollywood released a new, big budget cinematic telling of the story of Noah and the Ark. It had big-name stars, lots of special effects, it was shot in 3D and people were very impressed with the computer generated animals and ocean scenes. (This may not be the movie for you if you are prone to sea sickness.) I don’t know why I…

The Babylonian Talmud is a remarkable document. Pieced together by its rabbinic editors in the 6th century, it comprises a running discussion placing rabbis who lived over a several hundred-year period into a series of long, raucous conversations with one another. It contains discussion about law, science, ethics, and of course theology. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Talmud is the breadth of…