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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: Self-Imposed Restlessness for the Weary: Fear of Stillness in Elul
http://rabbigeffen.blogspot.com/2014/09/self-imposed-restlessness-for-weary.html
Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Monday, September 8, 2014. Self-Imposed Restlessness for the Weary: Fear of Stillness in Elul. I walked into my regular Thursday morning yoga class recently, and saw something funny. If you’ve never been to a yoga class before, the general idea is, since it is a contemplative practice, you arrive a little before the class, set up your mat, and begin to center yourself so that once the teacher officially begins, you are ready. To their surprise, of the 42 people who sai...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: September 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Monday, September 8, 2014. Self-Imposed Restlessness for the Weary: Fear of Stillness in Elul. I walked into my regular Thursday morning yoga class recently, and saw something funny. If you’ve never been to a yoga class before, the general idea is, since it is a contemplative practice, you arrive a little before the class, set up your mat, and begin to center yourself so that once the teacher officially begins, you are ready. To their surprise, of the 42 people who sai...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: February 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Saturday, February 15, 2014. Character Counts: Cookie Thievery and Idolatry. The following is my sermon from Shabbat Ki Tissa). The Cookie Thief by Valerie Cox*. A woman was waiting. At the airport one night,. With several long hours. She hunted for a book. In the airport shop,. Bought a bag of cookies. And found a place to drop. She was engrossed in her book,. But happened to see,. That the man beside her,. As bold as could be,. Grabbed a cookie or two. He took one too.
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: July 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Friday, July 25, 2014. The Climate of Our Hearts. From the Washington Post earlier this week: “On July 23, 2012, the sun unleashed two massive clouds of plasma that barely missed a catastrophic encounter with the Earth’s atmosphere. …Had this event occurred a week earlier when the point of eruption was Earth-facing, a potentially disastrous outcome would have unfolded.”. There but for the grace of God, right? Or is it cold and closed? 8211; translated most often as bas...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: June 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Friday, June 13, 2014. Gun Violence and Seeing the Promised Land. About three weeks ago just after the shooting near UC Santa Barbara, the satirical newspaper “The Onion” ran a little article that, sadly, proved not so satirical. We are living in, what I believe to be, a particularly dark moment in our country’s history. It would be great to see an end to gun violence in our country, or even our city, but the real challenges far outweigh the potential rewards. Like...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: Pushing Forward to Get Back Home
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Saturday, August 9, 2014. Pushing Forward to Get Back Home. And continue through the High Holy Days) to impact our path on that journey, all through the process of teshuvah. 8211; that turning and returning to the best of who we can yet be. For most, I think, teshuvah. Talk doesn’t really start until Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but the truth is, Jewish tradition begins the teshuvah. On Tisha b’Av. And so this Shabbat, the first Shabbat after Tisha b’Av. Of comfort, c...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: January 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Friday, January 3, 2014. What Judaism Can Teach Us About New Years Resolutions. In this week’s Torah portion, Bo. Usually, we wouldn't read parshat Bo. Until early to mid-February, but the oddities of this Jewish calendar year have presented us with a powerful opportunity to read parshat Bo. Might have something to inform our experience of the secular new year as well. The root of chodesh. We, as humans, of course, resonate with this connection of time and change or re...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: Meaning and Meaninglessness
http://rabbigeffen.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-meaning-of-meaning.html
Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Saturday, January 10, 2015. My remarks from Shabbat services on Friday, January 9, 2015). Where is the meaning in any of it? And in times like this, we first ask questions like those that involve us looking outside of ourselves for meaning, but often afterwards turn to look more internally, and ask ourselves what our existence means in the grand scheme of things when so often everything can seem so meaningless? In Brooks’ words:. Put more simply, meaning is what should...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: December 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Friday, December 26, 2014. History and Memory - The What and How of Remembering. My remarks from Shabbat services on Friday, December 26, 2014). But the process of reflecting on the past is not always an easy one, and too often we jump right in to the realm of history, solely addressing what we assume is the operative question: what happened? How will I choose to shape my memories? To demonstrate, let me share with you this example from my family. But something funny h...
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog: March 2014
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Pri HaGeffen - Rabbi Geffen's Blog. Wednesday, March 12, 2014. I wrote this poem on the occasion of my synagogue sisterhood's Vashti's Banquet. It references a number of biblical and midrashic sources, as well as commentaries, including modern, on Vashti and her story.). From the pen of men. Forever staining my name,. Co-opted for the sake. Of an agenda that was not my own. According to the Scroll. Named after that other. Who replaced my throne. Next to the king. Whose desires I would not entertain.
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