Mark H. Levin

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Apr 3, 2020, 12:24 AM

Seder in a time of plague

Many of us will be leading seders with much diminished in size this year: the Year of the Plague. But also many will extend our tables virtually, and enjoy family and friends remotely. But what will we include from...

Mar 23, 2020, 5:22 AM

The spirituality of washing for Seder

Traditionally, we wash our hands three times during the seder. The first, right after the first kiddush, without a blessing, called urchatz. The second time, right before the meal, with the traditional hand blessing, "... who has commanded us regarding...

Mar 22, 2020, 4:30 AM

Seder in a Time of Plague

American Jewry's most popular holy day, Passover, begins at sundown, Wednesday, April 8th this year, with the seder. Approximately 90% of us host or attend a seder annually, by far the most inclusive Jewish event in any year. Food, family...

Nov 17, 2017, 2:33 PM

Why are there Reform and Conservative Jews in Israel?

Reform Judaism is not exclusively, or even primarily, a movement. Reform Judaism is an approach, a means of viewing Jewish law, history and practice, consistent with the intellectual demands of modernity. Shmuel Rosner published an article stating that the number...

Jul 28, 2017, 10:54 AM

Israel, Haredim, Liberal Jews, and the Kotel HaMa’aravi

Theodore Herzl founded modern Zionism for a single purpose: to normalize Jewish existence among the nations and thereby end anti-Semitism. He proposed achieving this laudable goal by ingathering the exiles of the Jewish people from the Diaspora, from whichever...

Jul 21, 2017, 12:30 AM

Men and Women Used to Pray Together at the Kotel

Agudath Israel posted a statement by Rabbi Avi Shafran that Jews have prayed at the Western Wall since 1967 according to halakhah (Jewish law), by which he meant that Jews have always been separated by gender, as is the...

Mar 23, 2016, 6:39 PM

Jews will cheer for anyone who promises to remove the threat

I wonder what is behind the overwhelming reception Trump received this evening at the AIPAC Convention. American Jews clearly are perpetually afraid, a lifetime of fear, at least since the Holocaust. First it was a possible second Holocaust with Israel,...

Jul 9, 2015, 9:53 PM

NO ONE lives by biblical law. No one.

When the Orthodox claim that their conclusions go back 2,000 years, they are just plain historically inaccurate

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About Me

Mark H. Levin was born in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of Boston University, Rabbi Levin studied two years in Israel, was ordained at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and received his DHL in liturgy in 2001. Rabbi Levin is the Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, KS, and has been retired since 2014.