Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International When I became a father for the first time, like many men, I had no idea what I was doing. Short of helping create an actual human being, I had no real understanding of how to care for that life. I relied on instinct, love, anxiety, …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC Parashat Naso contains one of the most difficult passages in the Torah: the ritual of the Sotah, the woman suspected of adultery. There is no way to make this text easy. A husband is overcome by jealousy. He suspects his wife of betrayal. The matter is brought …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International The Torah’s account of Sinai is not gentle. Neither is my account of growing into manhood. Much like our ancestors’ experience receiving the Torah eons ago, my experience receiving the Torah contained in masculinity was filled with confusion, awe, fear, trembling and pressure. That’s not to …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International The Book of Numbers begins, unsurprisingly, by counting. At the opening of Bamidbar (lit. In the wilderness), God tells Moses to take a census of the Israelites: tribe by tribe, household by household, name by name. It is easy to read the moment as administrative. A nation in …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International Men are often taught to treat money as proof of manhood. Not just as a practical necessity. As evidence. Evidence that you are competent, desirable, serious, protective, respectable. Evidence that you can provide, recover, endure. Evidence that your life is moving forward. And if that evidence …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International Shlomo Bardin, the visionary founder of Brandeis-Bardin, famously taught that Judaism is “caught, not taught.” He was right, and also only half right. Judaism is contagious. It travels through melody, gesture, hospitality, rhythm, meals, posture, atmosphere. It gets into a person through the body before it …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International Grief is one of the places where masculinity most often betrays men. Not because men do not feel deeply. They do. But many men are trained to metabolize loss through motion rather than mourning. Keep working. Keep producing. Keep carrying. Keep the face composed and the …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International There is a particular kind of loneliness that can take root inside a marriage not because love has vanished, but because labor has gone unseen. A wife is carrying the schedule, the remembering, the anticipating, the soothing, the cleaning, the planning, the noticing, the recovering, the …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International There is a certain kind of man our culture still knows how to applaud. He is bold. Unfiltered. A little dangerous. He says what others will not say, does what others will not do, and carries himself with the confidence of someone who mistakes impulse for …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed — Executive Director, FJMC International אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ לֹ֥א תִכְבֶּֽה׃ A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out. (Leviticus 6:6 – Parashat Tzav) There is a fire in every man. Sometimes it burns hot with ambition, anger, desire, grief, urgency, or love. Sometimes it burns low, …
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