Eyal Bitton, at The Blogs

Aug 12, 2024, 10:57 AM

Transforming Tisha B’Av: From Mourning to Joy

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-the-flag-of-israel-4033852/

Is it time to transform Tisha B’Av into a day of joy? Should the Jewish people reconsider how they commemorate Tisha B’Av? Tisha B’Av is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, marking the end of Jewish sovereignty in the...

May 8, 2024, 7:03 AM

Am Israel vs B’nai Israel

We are witnessing the Jewish world divide into two. The divide is not between religious denominations. Neither is it between secular and religious adherence. Nor is it Israel vs the Diaspora. No. We are witnessing the early stages of the...

Nov 22, 2023, 11:23 AM

Jewish History 100 Years From Now

One hundred years from now, what will be recorded in Jewish history books about our time? What follows is a fictional portrayal of a page from the history books in 2123. ********** An Overview of Jewish History (2123 edition) The Ancient Romans...

Oct 13, 2023, 5:12 AM

What We Have Learned

What have we learned over the last few days, since the Palestinian terror group Hamas launched a massive and savage terrorist attack on Simchat Torah? We learned that Hamas really do mean the entirety of Israel when they refer to...

Sep 23, 2023, 1:00 PM

The High Priest Waits For You

Imagine you are standing in the court of the ancient Temple, surrounded by your fellow Israelites, waiting to hear the spoken name of God from the high-priest, the Kohen HaGadol. As he speaks the holy name with reverence, you...

Aug 31, 2023, 1:31 AM

Rosh Hashanah and the Longing for Home

Two of the special additions to the Rosh Hashanah Amidah are the Zichronot and Shofarot sections. The Zichronot section is about remembrances. It tells us that God remembered Noah, God remembered Abraham, and that God will remember God’s covenant with our forefathers, “and I...

Aug 3, 2023, 5:58 AM

King David and Moral Responsibility

Last year, I gave a lecture on how the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis gives us the lens through which we are to read the rest of the Torah and through which we are to see...

Oct 29, 2022, 12:40 PM

The Waters are Rising

The waters around us are rising. Over the past month, Kanye West has unleashed a deluge of hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric. While he has lost several business partnerships and agency representation, he has received a disturbingly huge amount of support. People...

Jul 30, 2022, 12:22 PM

Tikkun Olam, American Jewry, and The Giving Tree

“Once there was a tree…” are the opening words of Shel Silverstein’s classic poem, The Giving Tree. The tree loves a little boy and gives him its shade, its apples, its branches, its trunk, until it is merely a...

May 4, 2022, 11:56 PM

Anti-Zionism is a genocidal ideology

Have you noticed the rallies in NYC, LA, Toronto, London, Berlin, the last several weeks? Do you know why they’ve been protesting? It's simple. They’ve been protesting Israel’s existence. That’s it. They're demanding Israel's elimination. There’s not even a...

About Me

Eyal Bitton is the cantor of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland, Oregon where he incorporates Sephardi/Moroccan music, Ashkenazi music, popular adaptations, and original compositions into the service. As a composer and writer, his theatrical works have been produced in the US, Canada, Kenya, and China.