Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International Family life is messy at worst and meaningful at best. Parent-child relationships are not as easy to navigate as one might think. Just because parent and child might share a genetics or an emotional bond, that does not mean they both inherently connect with, or understand, one …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International This weeks Torah reading, Shoftim (trans: Judges), opens with one of the Torah’s most famous commands: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). But what follows is more interesting than the slogan. Moses does not simply tell Israel to find good people and put them in charge. He builds a system …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International On Friday nights, my sons and I sometimes go to the farmers market in Monrovia. It is not the most traditional way to welcome Shabbat, but it has its own liturgy: dinner from the food stalls, the hum of families wandering beneath strings of lights, and my …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International The Ten Commandments are listed twice in the Torah. Once in the book of Exodus, and the other time is found in the book of Deuteronomy this week. We would be wise to look at these commandments as more than rules designed to restrain bad behavior. Rules can …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International The Book of Deuteronomy begins with Moses telling a story. He stands at the edge of the Promised Land and looks backward. He remembers the leaders he appointed, the spies who frightened the people, the choices that went wrong and the years spent wandering because fear became …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International This week’s Torah reading, Matot, opens with a sentence that sounds simple until you try to live by it: “If a man makes a vow to God or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International There is a brutal sequence in Chukat that is easy to miss because the story moves so quickly. And since June is Men’s mental health awareness month, we should pause and read the story closely. Miriam dies. The people have no water. They complain to Moses …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International Our ancestors are standing at the edge of possibility. They have been freed from Egypt. They have received Torah at Sinai. They have been shaped, however imperfectly, into a people. Now, in parashat Sh’lach, they are close enough to the Promised Land to imagine actually entering it. Moses sends twelve …
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 …
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