Pacific Jewish Center | Rabbi Rotating Header Image

Posts Tagged ‘Matisyahu’

My Chanukah Message To You: Light Knows No Friend or Foe

heart candlesThis was the main message of my sermon for the first Shabbos Chanukah. I hope to publish the sermon in its entirety in the coming days.

I would like to share with you an important message that strikes me as central to Chanukah and in particular to Chanukah in 2009.

In Friday’s NY Times, David Brooks writes about the Chanukah story. The article is interesting, a bit provocative and very thoughtful. I recommend reading the article in its entirety.

In his words: (more…)

Matisyahu, NBC and The Olympic Winter Games Make A Great Team

Matisyahu-One_DayI first heard of Matisyahu while working as a Campus Rabbi at USC. The Jewish students on campus were really into his music (this was ~5 years ago) and some of my students invited me to join them at a Matisyahu concert.

He was performing at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood which was right near my home. I went and it was really cool. The music was great, the message was equally wholesome and the connection that I got to build with my students was profound.

I liked it enough that I took my wife to a Matisyahu show at the American Jewish University a few weeks later. It was a bad venue for a concert. It was more like a movie theater than the right venue for a reggae concert. Still, we enjoyed the music.

I knew that Matisyahu had made it, when (more…)