by Rabbi Moshe Hauer | Aug 29, 2017 | Moadim
Introducing the Yamim Noraim Theme for 5778 This week’s eclipse can help us set the theme for the High Holiday season ahead. The Talmud (TB Succah 29a) attributes the incidence of a solar eclipse to a few possible causes, each of them failures of humankind. This...
by Rabbi Moshe Hauer | Mar 10, 2017 | Moadim
Dear Friends: I hope this letter finds you all well and looking forward to the beautiful Yom Tov of Purim. I address this letter to all of you, and especially to parents of teenagers. One of the unusual aspects of Purim is the celebration of the day through drinking...
by Rabbi Moshe Hauer | Jan 3, 2017 | Moadim
As a community, we have been shaken by a series of recent tragic losses and challenges experienced by individuals and families within our community. We are unsettled, and we wonder what it all means and which steps we might consider in response. Yet now, on Chanukah,...
by Rabbi Moshe Hauer | Dec 20, 2016 | Moadim
Chanukah and Purim are seen as celebrating two different kinds of experiences for the Jewish People. In the story of Purim we were threatened with physical annihilation, while the Greeks posed primarily a spiritual threat. Thus in the Al HaNissim thanksgiving prayer...
by Rabbi Moshe Hauer | Oct 9, 2016 | Moadim
Yizkor A few weeks ago I was in Israel, trying to be helpful to my father, who was in the hospital. On Sunday morning I took a brief stroll to the hospital’s small shul, and noticed a Sefer, a book that I had never seen before, a new collection of Torah thoughts from...
by Rabbi Moshe Hauer | May 11, 2016 | Moadim
What we call Sefer Shemos is referred to by our Sages as the Sefer HaGeulah, the Book of Redemption, or more commonly – Exodus. While this is an appropriate description of the book’s first half, its second half seems to veer off into an entirely different...
