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Rachel Anisfeld

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Dec 15, 2017, 10:37 PM

For Chanukah: On Just Doing Your Best

You do your best and God will do the rest. That is what my students told me was the message of a story we read last week about candle lighting. The story goes like this: Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, a...

Nov 24, 2017, 4:58 PM

Parashat Vayetze and Thanksgiving: The Power of Awareness

Behold, God is in this place and I, I did not know. אכן יש ה' במקום הזה ואנכי לא ידעתי Behold God is here, right now, and I am not aware of it. God is in the moment of traffic in...

Nov 10, 2017, 6:31 AM

Sarah’s Legacy: Equanimity

We all have good days and bad days; some days we are confident and generous and upbeat and other days we are irritable and insecure and unkind. We are inconsistent; our moods shift with the winds and the situations...

Sep 2, 2017, 1:45 AM

Hurricane Harvey and Parashat Ki Tetze

Underneath all the stuff, there is love. In Houston, large swaths of the population have lost almost all of their worldly goods. It is hard to even imagine such a scenario – no clothes, no toiletries, no home, no...

Aug 11, 2017, 8:34 PM

Parshat Ekev: Not Because We Deserve It

“If you are breathing, that is nature’s way of saying that you belong here. You are enough.” I saw this on a teacher website, something that a teacher said to his students every day as part of a breathing...

Aug 4, 2017, 7:17 AM

Reflections on Parashat Va’ethanan: Why God Makes Me Feel Whole

Often in life, one feels some slight dissonance or discomfort, as if you are a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. There is your true self and then there is what you have to do to...

Jul 14, 2017, 7:08 AM

Parashat Pinchas: the unstuck children of sinners

Our lives, our choices are not completely determined by our parents’ paths and by our past. We each shape our own destinies. At every moment we have complete freedom to act in a fresh new way. In this week’s parsha...

May 26, 2017, 12:24 AM

Parashat Bamidbar and Shavuot: Finding Your Place

In the vast, uncultivated desert, the Israelites had an orderly method of encampment and travel – three tribes on each of four sides, north, south, east and west, each group with its own representative flag, all surrounding the Tabernacle...

May 19, 2017, 8:11 PM

Parashat Behar-Behukotai: On Harmful Speech and Awe of God

It is easy to hurt someone with words. We do it all the time, in subtle and unsubtle ways, pointing out how another person is lacking in comparison to us, showing up their ignorance or incompetence, commenting on the...

May 12, 2017, 2:17 PM

Parashat Emor: On Declaring Holiness

Mikraei Kodesh – this is the term used in our parsha and throughout the Torah for holidays – days that are “called” holy, called holy by “you,” Israel. The power to proclaim holiness is given to human beings. We...

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About Me

Rachel Anisfeld holds a PhD in Jewish Studies and studies and teaches Torah in a variety of Atlanta adult education settings.