News, Updates, & Resources
Get a free piece of music!
I recently composed a setting of V’sham’ru for my congregation. It’s a call and response and you can have your community singing it without much teaching at all! And I want to share it with you for free!
Counting the Omer for 2012
For the past few years, we’ve reclaimed the tradition of counting the Omer at our Temple. I like it because of the anticipation of counting up (not down!) to Shavuot, the anniversary of the receiving of the Torah, and celebrating our Confirmation students.
Sholem Aleichem dir, Amerike!
I'm really looking forward to singing with the Jewish People's Philharmonic Chorus in their production of Sholem Aleichem dir, Amerike! The 1956 Birnbaum/Rauch operetta, is based on Sholom Aleichem's Motl, Peyse dem khazns ("Motl, Peyse the Cantors' Son"), and was...
Hazzanut and Jazz with the Afro-Semitic Experience
For those of you who missed the concert, please watch the highlights! More video to come! [youtubegallery] Highlights from the Afro-Semitic Experience|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gstS7Xn11ZA Shomeir Yisrael|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp0fuDFd5wc...
I’m dreaming of a white… Hanukkah?
One of the most famous of Christmas songs is by a Jewish composer: Irving Berlin. I don't care what face tradition you grew up with; White Christmas is a terrific song and it makes me think of the season. But where are all the great Hanukkah songs? Where is the Jewish...
Finding an "ultimate meaningful existence"
Rabbi Alvin Reines, professor of philosophy at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1958 until his death in 2004, taught that religion exists because we realize that we are each destined to die. Because our life is finite, with a beginning and an end, we...
Finalitly of Judgment
On September 21, 2011, at 10:53 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia. He was tried and convicted for the assault of two men and the murder of a third, a police officer, in Savannah, Georgia in August of 1989. As with other...
Slow to Anger
God passed by before [Moses] and proclaimed, “The Eternal God, the Eternal God, omnipotent, merciful and kind, slow to anger, with tremendous love and truth. Who remembers deeds of love for thousands [of generations], forgiving sin, rebellion and error. Who does not...
My Sabbatical Year (a sermon for Shabbat Shuva)
“You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down… some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.” –Aaron Copland