Religion

Each year, Muslims around the world mark the beginning of a new year on the Islamic, or Hijri, calendar. This year the new year will begin on June 17.  While many people are familiar with New Year celebrations on Jan. 1, the Islamic New Year...

Longtime St. Catherine Parish member Anna Quinones and Maria Dominguez, the church’s office manager, led the preparation, organization and distribution of Thanksgiving meal baskets for families in need on Nov. 18. Photo: Michael Moore While Thanksgiving is often celebrated as an opportunity to enjoy abundance...

Less than two weeks ago, amidst lots of food, party poppers and Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve, my family and I celebrated the new year. I’m not sure where my neighbors obtained their military grade explosives, but it was an impressive show!  Once my...

One of the blessings of being a rabbi is officiating at weddings. I’m currently working with my first second-generation couple. One of the bride’s parents was among the first couples I married, making this a particularly meaningful and full-circle moment. In addition to a marriage...

P.T. Barnum famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” What he meant by that was that it doesn’t matter as much what people are saying about you as long as they’re talking about you. The worst feeling is not when someone speaks...

“Follow your dream—you can do it!” That is the encouragement often offered to children, to youth and to adults in our lives. It is an encouragement to be bold, to pursue their dreams and to persist through difficulties. But what is that dream? What is...

We are experiencing a lot of fear these days.  Sometimes fear is legitimate and real. Other times, our fears are overblown and irrational. We call these kinds of fears phobias. The fear of immigrants coming into our country is a phobia, that is, an irrational fear. Some running for...

I was supposed to be in Israel today. To be precise, this morning, I was going to wake up in a quaint hotel near the Old City of Safed, enjoy a delicious breakfast al fresco while taking in the mountaintop views, tour the Artists' Quarter,...

Deep in the faith of most Americans is the belief that there is a “Just God,” regardless of which religious faith one follows.  Even those who approach this universe primarily from a scientific view, note that “how things work” points to an order that must...

Prayer takes on different forms in different religious expressions. Prayers are chanted, spoken or sung. Prayers are spoken aloud or uttered more silently.  One of the notable expressions of prayer in Christianity is the prayer Jesus taught his disciples when they asked, “Lord, teach us to...