Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International Anger has a bad reputation in both religious and secular life. Religion often warns that anger can lead us toward sin. Contemporary culture frequently treats it as something to manage, suppress, or “let go.” We praise people for staying calm and worry about those who lose their temper. …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International There is a particular temptation that comes with leadership, especially for men who have spent years building organizations, communities, careers, or reputations. We begin by wanting to serve something larger than ourselves. Eventually, almost without noticing, we can start believing that the thing we serve cannot survive without …
Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International One of the easiest things in life is to know what kind of person you want to be. One of the hardest is to become that person. Most of us have little trouble naming our values. We believe in honesty, loyalty, generosity, fairness and compassion. We want to …
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 …
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