Avi Baumol

Apply for a Blog

Mar 27, 2025, 2:36 PM

The Tenth Day Paradox: Shaping Jewish History

The tenth of the month pulses through Jewish history as a hidden heartbeat exhibiting covenantal choices and divine reciprocity that shapes the soul of the nation. While the full moon of the 15th anchors festivals like Pesach and Sukkot...

Mar 6, 2025, 11:55 PM

Purim Reflections: How Can We Sing?

The early Zionist precursors in the 6th century BCE, known as "shivat Zion" or "Return to Zion," were Jews exiled to Babylonia following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Despite the trauma of exile, life for...

Jan 2, 2025, 10:47 PM

Wishing Upon a Flux Capacitor

What if I could go back in time? To what date would I set the time machine? Pre-history? Ancient history of Abraham my forefather? The Exodus from Egypt? Sinai? Or perhaps more modern times, like the ‘golden age of...

Oct 23, 2024, 1:55 PM

A Prayer/Elegy/Piyut, One Year Later

This poem emerged from our nightmare week following October 7th 2023. I look back on it and would change nothing one year hence. I hope and pray that as we set our sights on the months ahead we can...

Oct 15, 2024, 11:12 PM

Embrace the Contradiction!

I heard two speeches over Yom Kippur which contradicted each other: One offered a path to even get closer to God despite the trauma and the incomprehensibility of the tragedy, while the other demanded that God ask us for...

Oct 10, 2024, 7:56 PM

How to Say I’m Sorry

Every year, I fall into the same trap during the 10 Days of Repentance: I succeed in ramping up my ‘Man v. God laws’ by studying a bit more Torah, going to shul more than usual, being diligent in...

Oct 1, 2024, 1:37 PM

Embracing complexity at our Rosh Hashanah table

What food could possibly symbolize the chaotic experience of this unprecedented year?

Jul 10, 2024, 9:37 PM

Parshat Chukat: A National Epitaph

The Dash Poem by Linda Ellis I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning to the end. He noted first came the date of the...

May 30, 2024, 8:55 PM

Coming Home: From the ‘Alter Haym’ to My Biblical Homeland!

At one point in the biblical story of Jacob, he has a realization -- a prophecy -- an understanding that his time in Aram has come to an end. What in his mind was supposed to have lasted only...

Apr 4, 2024, 1:38 PM

The Army of God

When I was a kid in Riverdale in the 70s and 80s I went to a modern Orthodox school (S.A.R) with the amazing Rabbi Fuld as the principal and went to a modern Orthodox shul as well (though the...

Load more

About Me

Rabbi Avi Baumol has served Jewish communities around the world as rabbi, educator, author, and leader. After 11 years as the rabbi in Krakow, Poland, Rabbi Baumol has returned home and is teaching Torah in Midreshet Torah Ve'Avoda in Jerusalem. He graduated Yeshiva University and Bernard Revel Graduate School with an MA in Medieval JH. He is a musmach of RIETS and studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shevut. He served as a rabbi in Vancouver British Columbia for five years. Rabbi Baumol is the author of "The Poetry of Prayer" Gefen Publishing, 2010, .He also co-authored a book on Torah with his daughter, Techelet called 'Torat Bitecha'. As well, he is the Editor of the book of Psalms for The Israel Bible--https://theisraelbible.com/bible/psalms. In summer 2019 Rabbi Baumol published "In My Grandfather's Footsteps: A Rabbi's Notes from the Frontlines of Poland's Jewish Revival". In 2023 he published Parshology: Encountering the World through the Weekly Parsha and in 2024 his most recent book, 'God, Man and Time: An Introduction to the Jewish calendar and its Holidays