Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater

My birthday is next weekend. I will be 42. Relatively speaking, that is young, I know, but it is still always getting further and further away from the age of the high schoolers I teach every Sunday, and the b'nai mitzvah kids I help train each week. To them, 42...

Paul McCartney worried for all us when he famously sang, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" When we love someone deeply, of course age doesn't matter, but there is a fear, when we are younger, that love can wear off, that the feelings...

Since "The Artist" recently won big at the Oscars, I have been intrigued by the notion of silent film. To be sure, I am no movie buff or even an appreciator of fine films, but trends interest me and how a movie with no words won the biggest awards in...

David Letterman has his Top 10, Sports Center has its Top 10, Time has its Top 100 and lots of others have lists too. So, rather than write another article on slavery and the serious issues facing our world, as the Jewish community approaches Passover and as the Christian community...

With Super Bowl Sunday this weekend, I have the opportunity to talk about two of my favorite things and tie them together: sports and prayer. Having once wanted to be a sports broadcaster and news anchor, as well as a radio disc jockey, my family, especially my kids, have come...

The names in these scenarios have been changed for the sake of the people's privacy.

Martin worked for 30 years for a local electrical company, made a good living, saved some money, was able to buy a house, send his kids to college. When it came time to retire,...

When my kids were in kindergarten, they sang the song, "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," and it has became a family song ever since. We usually do it as a joke, as they were quite cute and had some fun dance moves to go with it, but as...

Peter Holden is a 92-year-old African American man who grew up in the Jim Crow South, raised in North Carolina. I saw a video recently on the New York Times where he talked about how in the time of the depression blacks and whites came together to help one another,...

In his speech that became known as "The Spirit of Liberty," delivered in New York City's Central Library, in the midst of World War II, the preeminent judge and judicial philosopher, Learned Hand, asked, "What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often...

There is an idea in my life as a rabbi that seems to always apply whenever I give a challenging, controversial or "political" sermon: I know I have succeeded when folks on both the left and right sides of the spectrum are upset! I always attempt to provide balance, even...

I thought I had my ideas in order for what I wanted to say on bin Laden, and then I heard Father Greg Boyle at the Pasadena Mayor's Prayer Breakfast yesterday. He got me believing that hope in this world is possible when we love one another, when we build...

We live in embarrassingly serious times. Embarrassing because we are forced to deal with the idiocy of such nonsense as the "birth certificate" crowd, serious because it is distracting us from the direly important work that needs to be done. Embarrassing because more people will care about the royal...

I grew up in the garment industry. For most of my childhood, my father was a clothing salesman and later, had a small manufacturing business too. He started his career at Macy's in NYC, later working for Wrangler, Levi, Summit Sportswear and finally, opening his own business, The Grater...

There will be those who say that because I am writing to support my Muslim brothers and sisters today, in the face of "radicalization hearings" in the US Congressman by Rep. Peter King (R-NY), that I am a self-hating Jew, a naive and uninformed clergy person who is selling out...

I was nervous about going to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu this past Sunday at All-Saints Church. I was nervous because, despite his remarkable life story, which of course includes fighting and winning the battle against apartheid in his homeland, South Africa, he has made comments in the past about Israel...

It is with great amazement and awe that I watched the past 18 days in Egypt, with citizens, men, women and children coming together, in mostly nonviolent and peaceful protests to call for the resignation of their despotic leader. And today, on the 18th day, which in Hebrew 18 equals...

The land of the Pharaoh is again in turmoil, this time from an internal revolution, a rising up of the people themselves, calling for a better tomorrow, an end to a dictatorship masking as president. The Jewish people can relate well to the injustices faced in Egypt; our tradition even...

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.  You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. -- Martin Luther King

"Joy comes in the morning," lets certainly hope so. We need hope right now, and not a...

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said, "In a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible." I have been mulling that quote over in my mind since I learned of the horrible assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and cold-blooded murder of the other innocent Arizonans in Tucson. Certainly,...

We live in interesting times. I imagine that there is reason to say this in every generation, which is fair, but ours are certainly among the more interesting we have seen recently. With the advent of social media, and with its massive domination of our era, we are seeing...