April 2026
Letter from the Rabbi
Dear Temple Israel Community,
Hag Kasher v’Sameach and a Zissen Pesach!
We should have a holiday that is sweet, joyous, and kosher! The word kosher has come to colloquially mean “fit to eat according to Jewish law and custom” but in a more fundamental sense means “proper” “correct” as in ethical or upstanding. As Rav Talia led us in exploring for a TI-TC Adult Ed event in March, we cannot simply claim that Jewish food laws are simply about being ethical. Simultaneously, our sacred tradition strives to teach us how to live good and ethical lives through the structures through Mitzvot.
On Pesach, we focus our attention on one of the key ethical insights of the Torah: that all human beings deserve dignity befitting creatures made in G-d’s image. In the story of the Exodus, G-d demonstrates a Divine mandate against slavery, dehumanization, and tyranny. In the laws which follow in the book of Exodus and the rest of the Torah, our experience of subjugation in Egypt becomes the cornerstone of the ethos of a sacred society: a society where we know the soul of the stranger and, instead of taking advantage of the vulnerable, we go out of our way to love and aid the stranger, orphan, and widow.
As we gather with family and friends – and in shul community – to observe Pesach, in addition to the sweetness and joy of our festival, may we become recommitted to the ethical mandate of the Torah: to love and protect the vulnerable in our community, in our country, and around the world.
March was a very full month for Temple Israel and April will be as well! Of course, the meetings with two finalists for rabbi of Temple Israel were particularly consequential events. At the same time, our regular communal life marched onwards!
We had two joyous and fun Purim celebrations at the start of March. If you took photos at our Purim celebration, please send them to me! Last Shabbat, we had a special communal Shabbat dinner and Shabbat morning in honor of Shabbat haGadol. Each week, small groups gathered with me to study the Torah portion on Monday nights and discuss Torah and contemporary issues on Tuesday afternoons.
In April, we will have 7 different opportunities to celebrate Pesach in the community including full-morning services, Torah study, and evening services. I hope you will join us if you’re in town! We are also looking forward to another fascinating TI-TC Adult Ed program and communal commemorations of the Israeli national holidays, Yom HaShoah, Yom haZikaron, and Yom haAtzmau’t. Stay tuned for more details about how we will be marking these days together.
On the 2nd night of Pesach, we begin the Counting of the Omer. Each night, for 49 nights until Shavuot – the festival of the giving of the Torah – we are commanded to count the days. You can read more about Counting the Omer here: https://www.exploringjudaism.org/holidays/omer/
While there are many ways Jews make deep meaning out of this mitzvah, the core practice of counting each day teaches us to take note and pay attention to each day. Each new day provides us with opportunities to contribute to the improvement of the world, to learn something new, and to engage in another act of hesed. May the season of the Omer ahead support us in our efforts to cherish each day and continue to engage in mitzvot.
L’shalom,
Rabbi Micah R. Friedman
הרב מיכה שמחה פרידמן