THE HAPPIEST DAY
Rabbi Michael Whitman

Dear John,
Your presence at Kol Nidre is a presence of love, and proof of the possibility of reconciliation after even the deepest rupture.
The historical precedent for Yom Kippur, according to the Bible, is the day Moses returned from the top of Mt. Sinai with the second set of stone tablets, upon which were engraved the Ten Commandments – a replacement for the tablets Moses smashed in the aftermath of our terrible sin of the Golden Calf.
Moses’ appearance with the new tablets on the tenth day of …

QUESTIONING MY FAITH ON KOL NIDRE AND YOM KIPPUR
FATHER JOHN WALSH
Qol Nidre is one service I attend every year. Yom Kippur is my High Holiday. For more years than I can remember, I look forward to hear my friend, the Cantor, Gideon Zellermyer. Gideon’s voice is heard on Leonard Cohen’s last album, You Want It Darker. His voice is a delight to my ears but it enters my heart to question my faith as a Christian. Qol nidre, meaning all vows, is a prayer to release …

IN THE MEETING
Father John Walsh

In our North American culture, generally speaking, we distance ourselves from people who are different. When we distance ourselves from others we make them invisible. They don’t exist. We no longer have to think about them or do anything to interrelate with them. They are illusions. We are able to say or do whatever we want about them because they are not people, they don’t have feelings.
Then one of these non-people enters our lives and becomes a person. At first there is hesitancy. What are we …

CAN A LARGE FIRE BE PUT OUT BY A SPOONFUL OF WATER?
Rabbi Michael Whitman

Anti-Semitism is not new, and in recent years it has become gradually more virulent. But in the last few weeks and months it seems to be in a dangerous new phase – it feels different somehow, even more volatile.
For centuries, we have been debating and analyzing the causes of Anti-Semitism. And after studying this for years, I haven’t heard anything more conclusive or persuasive than the insight of Theodor Herzl, who said in 1897:
“We have sincerely tried …

CANADA — A CHRISTIAN NATION?
Father John Walsh

Canada was considered a Christian nation until somewhere around fifty or so years ago. The change was rather abrupt in parts of the country, more especially in “Catholic” Quebec. Throughout Canada statutory holidays and religious holydays were scheduled on the feasts on the Christian calendar. The “Quiet Revolution” in Quebec, beginning in the 1960s, was also the time of a world-wide cultural revolution towards liberal democracies and secular societies. Religion was no longer part of the public square but was privatized and relegated to …