Rabbi Jonah Layman

How to Live Amidst Chaos This past year has felt like a long roller coaster ride to me, filled with both extreme highs and lows. In addition to continuing to navigate the challenges of yet another year of covid both personally and professionally, there have been a number of family events that have been very trying and others that have been extremely joyous. Last September, just a week after Yom Kippur, my mother fell in her apartment in Philly and was hospitalized for a couple of days. When Lenore and I drove up to see my parents a few days after my mother came home from the hospital, they said they were ready to move closer to us. Within the next six weeks Lenore and I were able to secure an apartment in the Ring House in Rockville, hire movers for the furniture and other belongings that would go with them and to remove the rest of their belongings that wouldn’t be coming along. The move entailed finding new doctors here and going to appointments with them as well as many more logisti...

How Can We Believe in God? Yesterday I shared with you my emotional swings from crisis to joy and how difficult that has been to navigate, especially when we are experiencing so many global crises. I shared with you the midrash of the raven and the dove and ended with the comfort that God provides. Pictured as a stork with large, wide wings, God is able to shelter the distressed and the wounded under God’s protective wings.  Centuries ago the rabbis wrote the prayers found in our machzor. They and the Jewish community in ther time endured persecution, exile and murder at the hands of the Roman authority. In the middle ages, when more prayers were written, the Jewish community endured further slaughter, persecution and displacement. Given those historical contexts, the image of a comforting and protecting God should be found throughout our liturgy. It would make sense that the rabbis would want to encourage their community to find refuge and strength in God’s holy presence.  ...