
Rabbi Gordon’s Blog Page

Morality and Marriage Equality
April 2, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
A colleague just posted this on Facebook, from HuffPost. Jessica Gerson writes: The reason I call you a bigot, and the reason that we cannot politely agree to disagree, is that you are trying to make me, my life and my family subject to your opinion and/or religious belief…. If marriage equality becomes the law of the […]
Dear God —
December 15, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
I don’t usually address You this way. I don’t mean it like I’m starting a letter. I mean, Dear One. You Who are tender and compassionate toward Your creatures. You Who are precious Yourself. You Who may have created us, humans, in Your image so you wouldn’t be alone — but like all children, […]
Now I can change my Facebook profile picture
April 12, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
My Facebook profile picture since March 23 has been this: (Note that this “hoodie” — we just called them sweatshirts when I was a kid, or hooded sweatshirts — is from the Women’s Rabbinic Network conference in 2001.) As of today, I’ve switched it back to something else. George Zimmerman is being “welcomed” to the […]
We are all always coming and going
April 10, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Farming, Times Union • 0 Comments
Saturday night I captured a bat that was flying around Youngest Daughter’s room after second Seder. We’ve decided it must be one of the many guises of אליהו הנביא Elijah the Prophet. After she got over her heebie-jeebies she took some pictures of it and we let it go into the night. Yesterday the chicks […]
The Talk, when you’re raising young black men
March 21, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
I know. This isn’t news. I’ve even thought about it with my own children, two of whom are young black men. But my heart is in my throat because Trayvon Martin could be my son. And while we talk about race and color and perception and prejudice and difference and history — and our common […]
Walking While Black
March 21, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
Last summer my tall oldest son, who was almost 13 and muscular from soccer playing, was stopped by the State Police while he was walking home from the Brunswick Library with his backpack on. He’s an avid reader and we’ve judged him old enough to walk carefully along the busy road we live on, where there are […]
Sustaining the World Entire
February 15, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Farming, Times Union • 0 Comments
Yesterday we had a 45-minute addition to our already busy schedule: a walk and talk through Kayam Farm. It’s small — a few acres of vegetables and fruit and an acre of pasture for goats and chickens. Jakir (“Yakir”), the founder/director, talked us quickly through some of the educational programs and exercises they use to illustrate […]
Brickner Seminar at Pearlstone, first morning
February 13, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
For me, Tikkun Olam is inextricably intertwined with sustaining the world entire. It always has been, though I didn’t know those words for it. I was always out in nature and also trying to see the biggest picture. When I was at Camp Swig in California in the summer of 1974, in my first intensive Hebrew summer camp session, […]
Another way to look at text
February 13, 2012 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2012, blog, Times Union • 0 Comments
Studying Mishnah Gittin 5:8 with Rabbi Tzvi Blanchard of CLAL. In English, he insisted, because we’ll be teaching it in English if we ever teach it (except to my amazing Advanced Adult Hebrew Class on Sunday mornings!) and also because it allows us to see the text through other eyes than whatever was presented to us in rabbinical school. […]
A Legally Married Woman
April 8, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, Farming, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
The Spring peepers are out. I thought I heard them when we got home last night but it’s definite. I’ve been saying for a month or more that it’s Spring. Non-farmers don’t see it. 4 weeks ago, the boys (goats) were shedding. Just a little bit of their winter under-coat, but enough: if they’re shedding, it’s Spring. […]