Mendel Bluming | Blogger

Thought by Menachem Bluming… Yom Kippur had ended and the Chazzan, the cantor, was the last one out and about to lock the door so that he could go home to his family when an older man came rushing to the door. “Why are you locking the doors?” The man pleaded. “Let me in, I am here for Kol Nidrei!” First the chazzan thought he was kidding but quickly realized how serious this man was. “Please let me in I have never missed a Kol Nidrei!” The chazzan patiently explained that the man must have mixed up the dates because Kol Nidrei was 25 hours earlier… The man looked away and broke into uncontrolled sobbing… “Woe is me… My father told me that as long as I hear the Kol Nidrei each year I will remain connected with the Jewish community and with being a Jew and what will I do now?...”  he sobbed and cried. The chazzan was touched deeply by this outpouring of Jewish connection and longing and so he told the man that he would not miss hearing the Kol Nidrei that year. “Come with me...

Don’t you love the feeling of being in control? You have your morning routine, your customized workout, you control every dial and setting and speed that you possibly can. Amazon delivers almost before you press the order now button. Texts are responded to instantly, calls are picked up before they ring and you expect that. You are in control of your life! Don’t you enjoy and depend on order and predictability? But control is an illusion. I may feel like I’m in control, but when it comes down to it, I am absolutely not. And if there’s any indication of that, it’s 9/11, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma and so many other natural disasters. Weather forecasters can identify the storm. They can track it, measure its force, estimate its trajectory and somewhat predict its impact. But they, and we, are powerless to stop or redirect it, despite the tremendous technological and scientific advances we have seen in the last few decades. In the Torah we read about the mitzvah o...

Q: I dropped my faith a while ago. To be honest, I don't feel I am missing anything with G-d out of my life. If anything I am more free. It has made me wonder, if I lose my religion, have I really lost anything worthwhile?  Here's a thought: People often make the mistake of thinking that if you take away religion, you just get rid of believing in G-d. This is not true. You lose much more than G-d when you drop religion. Something else you lose when you drop religion is the idea of family. Family is a concept that cannot be taken for granted. The family is built and sustained on a belief system, a set of values, a worldview that sees marriage as a sacred covenant and parenthood as a moral responsibility. Without these supporting beliefs, the family is a baseless ideal that will erode with time. And these beliefs are religious. Only religion can provide a meaning to life that is higher than me. I was created with a purpose that is beyond myself. I am here to serv...