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William Hamilton

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May 3, 2024, 6:58 PM

Drained or Filled up

How to respond? Today’s air is thick with indignities. So responding well seems to have become a life-skill. Let’s sharpen the question: How do you know when you’ve responded well? A fellow-learner from our community offered me a metric this...

Apr 26, 2024, 6:52 PM

Once there was a farmer whose cart got stuck in a muddy pit. He tied a rope to his horse Charlie who began dragging it out. He shouted words of encouragement. “Come on Charlie, come on Sam, come on...

Apr 19, 2024, 5:39 PM

Growth as Greatness

“Then our offerings will be fragrant to God, like those of Judah and Jerusalem, as they used to be” (Mal 3:4). This is how tomorrow’s prophetic reading begins. It ends with Elijah. So the sages made it the reading...

Apr 12, 2024, 6:13 PM

Doing the Opposite

Losing sight of your child can turn a peaceful stretch along a stream into a formidable, frightful wilderness. Fear flips the switch. Well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what can flip the switch in the opposite direction. What...

Apr 5, 2024, 6:43 PM

Our hand-made Jewish gifts

“The most dangerous thing for a nation or a people is to plead guilty to imaginary sins.” Thus proclaimed Ahad Ha’am, one of Cultural Zionism’s founders, a century ago. Of course, we do make mistakes and we do own them....

Mar 30, 2024, 12:43 AM

A Share in this Mitzvah

Once upon a time, about a century ago, a certain gentleman made his way from house to house, collecting support for the Jewish National Fund. Local villagers willfully put coins in his blue and white JNF box. One day...

Mar 22, 2024, 4:26 PM

Listening For Feelings

Judaism is great at listening for feelings. Not to feelings. For them. What’s the difference? Listening to feelings involves having your radar up to register anger or distress in somebody’s voice. Listening for them is deciding to use a...

Mar 15, 2024, 4:52 PM

Clearing clotted passageways

“If your son or daughter joins my Unit, no matter how righteous they are, after a few weeks staffing a Checkpoint, where they'll be constantly exposed to menacing threats and spat upon, their core goodness may begin to erode.”...

Mar 8, 2024, 6:11 PM

Post-Traumatic Growth

Post-traumatic growth? It is possible. Yes, it’s true that catastrophic loss swallows you whole. But like most things in life, it’s true, but incomplete. Yotam Pilozer knows. If anyone does, he does. Since 2011 he’s led Israel’s Humanitarian Relief Agency,...

Mar 1, 2024, 6:44 PM

A story from Israel. We visited Ofakim, a town of 30,000, just a 15-minute drive from Beer Sheva. More than 30 of its residents were murdered by Hamas. The day we visited, a mother happened to come outside to...

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About Me

Rabbi William Hamilton has served as rabbi (mara d'atra) of Kehillath Israel in Brookline, MA since 1995.