“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine in December 1776, during the dark days of our Revolutionary War, our fragile nation only 6 months old.
Today, …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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12/3/20
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The day after William Jefferson Clinton was inaugurated as our 42nd president, on Jan. 20, 1993, I wrote a poem beginning with these words: “Maya Angelou read a poem/Yesterday, not any …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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11/6/20
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I have been a fan of Thomas L. Friedman ever since I read his 1989 book, “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” a perceptive, nuanced look at Israel’s involvement in the seemingly infinite …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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10/2/20
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“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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9/3/20
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My wife and I had known for well over a year that our granddaughter Clara was going to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, in Newton, Massachusetts, this past April 18, just two …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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8/7/20
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America is broken; our country has become the “Dis-united States.”
We routinely pledge allegiance to “one nation … indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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7/3/20
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Many, if not most, of us American Jews carry in our heads and hearts a sense of three separate but interrelated Israels: Am Yisrael, the people of Israel – that is, all Jews everywhere; Eretz …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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6/5/20
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This past March 3, the day of the Super Tuesday Democratic primary showdown between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, I made my final diary entry in the volume I had begun more than two years earlier. It …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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4/30/20
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In his 1985 book , “Time and Again: Autobiographical Essays,” Dan Jacobson (1929-2014), a well-respected South African and British writer, tells of growing up white and Jewish in a South …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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4/5/20
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Those of you who have found yourselves in the main lobby of Providence’s Temple Beth-El have probably noticed a striking art installation just to the left of the doors leading into the …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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3/8/20
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