I once said to my therapist that my love language is making helpful suggestions. But here's the thing. It's not true, because at its core, making helpful suggestions is a form of trying to control a situation or my own anxiety when people speak to me about their troubles or their pain. Or, I’m trying to feel helpful or powerful if I have the answers for people.

Nevei Kodesh, a warm and welcoming Jewish Renewal Community invites you to join us virtually for prayer, study and connection!

Two startlingly different and divergent award winning Westerns, which are surprisingly similar in their motifs, come to my mind. Almost mirror opposites, these two films contain an analogous theme: A lone, rather uptight, cowboy, who is attracted to another man’s wife, and a boy who grows more and more attached to the cowboy.

Counting the Omer during the time of the Coronavirus gives us a unique opportunity to see ourselves more clearly, with much of our emotional armor stripped away and without our usual busyness to distract us.

On the culminating 8th day of Passover, which coincides with Shabbat, join us for an uplifting and intergenerational evening of joyous Shabbat music, ritual, and deep sharing as we “Cross the Sea” together.

‘How long does it take to change the essence of a man?’

In the moving film about Colorado’s famous autistic environmentalist and animal rights activist, Temple Grandin, the final quote is: "A door opened and I went through it."

In the period between Passover and Shavuot there is a commandment to count the Omer. Why?

For the next seven weeks, Reb Tirzah invites us all to join her in a weekly meditation that will help cultivate our goodness and polish our hearts and minds.

Now, during this second week, we work to put our faith into action, even if we are still a bit unsure of ourselves; to discern what it is we need to grow in our interior garden and focus our intention to make it happen. This requires Gevurah: determination and focus.

Every Sephirah has a cosmic/divine face and a personal one. We can attune and harmonize ourselves to the former, so as to develop and refine the latter. Chesed is pure love.

Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder has just published his first book – 'The 50th Gate: Becoming a Better Human Through the Counting of the Omer'.