Hillel Goldberg

Is it hard to be joyous? The Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) is reputed to have said that the hardest mitzvah in the Torah is to be joyous for all seven days of Sukkot, without stop. Is it tough to be happy?Is it right to take drugs, or to drink heavily, if that is the only way to feel joyous?

For the coming year, let every Jew undertake a specific enhancement to one’s Shabbos observance. Let it counterbalance, so to speak, the absence of the spiritual merit of shofar on the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

At a time when I thought it obvious that nothing else matters like “who shall live and who shall die” — at a time like Rosh Hashanah — I learned that “nothing else matters” means something else to Steve Bannon and to the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, Dana Nessel.

Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the esteemed Ponovitcher rov, was asked why Jewish law states that one must leave a cemetery by a different route than the way one came. He responded, “Can any thinking person leave a cemetery the same as when he came?”

Pete, sweet Pete. Pete’s Fruits and Vegetables is not the same without you. Your sons are not the same without you. Your grandchildren are not the same without you. The Greek community of Denver is not the same without you. The Jewish community on the East Side of Denver is not the same without you.