Community Teachings
06/11/2019 08:41:02 PM
Do you have insights to share with the CBE community? This page is intended to share teachings by members of our community. Please submit any teachings to Rabbi Mike that you would like to share.
Archive of The STAR Column, "People of Chelm Want to Know" - Bob Ferrara
07/18/2022 01:11:59 PM
Click "Read More" to link to the 10+ years of archived columns by year and month. Congregant, Bob Ferrara, provides this explanation of this great resource, ten plus years of Q&A columns created by Bob, with Waky's...Read more...
Shabbat Shirah D'Var Torah - January 29, 2021 - Judy Kramer
01/29/2021 06:00:31 PM
A couple of months ago I took a class about the Canadian-Jewish singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who is perhaps best known for the song “Hallelujah.” Calling him a singer-songwriter is probably a bit of a misnomer, as he began his career as a poet and a novelist, and it...Read more...
Chanukah 5781 Virtual CBE Coffee House Poetry
12/17/2020 01:22:51 PM
During Chanukah, some powerful and beautiful poetry was presented by Rabbi Mike, Robert Grappel, and Leann Shamash. Click Read More for the links!
Click here for Rabbi Mike's poem, Tinder, Ember,...Read more...
The Great Jewish Latke Fry-Off Recipes - Chanukah 2020
12/16/2020 07:00:00 PM
This year, we featured a spoof of the beloved show, The Great British Bakeoff. But in classic Chanukkah style, it had a twist: it was a fry off!
Jon Linden, our MC, stood in for Sue and Mel in this version, hosting the show and keeping the laughs coming.
Don Hoban, Matt Kontoff and Marissa Krampf, our esteemed panel of judges, stood in the shoes of the great Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, with the slight...Read more...
Parashat chukat - June 26 2020 , ד׳ תמוז תש - Ronny Almog
06/26/2020 11:42:41 AM
Parashat chukat opens with the famous red cow ritual (Bamidbar 19). Rabbi Mike recently described it as one of the strangest mitzvot. It explains how to purify a person who had come into contact with a corpse, and involves slaughtering a red cow, burning it,...Read more...
Judaism as a Verb - Yom Kippur 5780/ 2019 - Sue Abrams
10/11/2019 09:34:30 AM
I invite you to join me in a journey to think of Judaism as a verb…
As the plane descended to the El Paso airport I looked out the window at the dusty landscape and thought about how I’d gotten there. El Paso was definitely not on my top ten places to go….But here I was, accompanied by a gigantic duffle bag crammed with stuffed animals and children’s books in Spanish. I was there to volunteer at a shelter on the border, giving...Read more...
Sanctuary - Rosh Hashanah 5780/2019 - Cindi Silverman
10/11/2019 09:27:54 AM
I begin with a story.
A woman, I will call her Sophia for her own privacy, came to the United States from a Central American country, after witnessing the death of family members and being threatened with her own life. She arrived with her husband and one son nearly thirty years ago. I don’t know how she arrived. I am not allowed to know that personal history. I do know that she lived quietly in the greater Boston area, raising two...Read more...
The Waters Are Risin' - Michael Biales
06/08/2019 07:00:00 PM
In late 2015 during the presidential primaries, I was noodling on the guitar and played a chord progression that I liked and the words “the waters...Read more...
Tikkun L'eil Shavuot - June, 2019/ Leslie Sternberg
06/07/2019 07:30:00 PM
Kol Ha Kavod (honor) to the...Read more...