Rabbi Mike Comins
Friday, May 5th, 6:30pm
Kabbalat Shabbat Service
Join your clergy for an uplifting Kabbalat Shabbat service. Come early for wine and cheese and stay late to enjoy the oneg. Our service leaders will be joined by Rabbi Mike Comins who will speak about the holiness of Shabbat and how to uplift this special day through prayer.
Saturday, May 6th, 9:00 - 10:30 AM in the Lillian Byer Social Hall (In-Person Only)
Torah Today Led by Rabbi Mike Comins
Rabbi Comins will bring his experience of walking the Sinai and Negev deserts to the interpretation of Torah. We’ll ask, “Does it make a difference to read Torah in the place where the events occurred?” So much of the formative history of the Jewish people happened in the desert, yet classical Jewish commentators and modern Bible scholars wrote in Europe or North America. Together we study and discuss the famous journey of Elijah to Horeb, where he hears the “still, small voice.” We will discuss this moving passage in the Hebrew Bible to learn the dynamics of listening deeply for God’s presence. Please note that Torah Today for this week will take place in-person only.
Afternoon Nature Experience & Havdalah, 4:30 - 6:30 PM at Mori Point in Pacifica
Meet at the trailhead at 4:30 PM, 2 Clarendon Rd, Pacifica, CA 94044
Whether a trip to the Grand Canyon, or putting flowers on the Shabbat dinner table, we can all be moved by the power and beauty of God’s world—yet those who sense the sacred in nature are sometimes denigrated as primitive, pagan and un-Jewish. Rabbi Mike Comins will discuss how the sublime experience of God’s presence in the physical world relates to Jewish thought and practice. He’ll present a “deep Jewish ecology” as the basis of a Jewish response to global climate change. And, he’ll tell a few stories as to what it’s like to be the only rabbi in Wyoming. Register here for this nature experience.
Sunday, May 7th, 9:30 - 11:30 AM in the Lillian Byer Social Hall
Making Prayer Real: Why Prayer is Difficult and What to Do About It
Who is responsible for your inner life? Is it the rabbi, the cantor, the synagogue architect? Rabbi Mike Comins believes that one key to transforming synagogue worship is to spend less time thinking about what happens up front on the bima, and more time on what happens in the hearts of pray-ers. He interviewed over 50 spiritual leaders for his book, Making Prayer Real, and discovered that those who find prayer meaningful often have little in common theologically, but share similar practices and techniques to bring prayer alive. Rabbi Comins will share the wisdom and best practices he gleaned to enliven and deepen our prayer lives. Register here for this workshop.
Rabbi Mike Comins is the author of A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways into Judaism and Making Prayer Real: Leading Jewish Spiritual Voices on Why Prayer is Difficult and What to Do about It (both Jewish Lights Publishing). He is also founder of the TorahTrek Center for Jewish Wilderness Spirituality. A native of Los Angeles and a graduate of UCLA, Rabbi Comins made aliyah and lived in Israel for fifteen years. He studied classical Jewish texts at the Pardes Institute, earned his MA in Jewish education from Hebrew University, and was ordained in the Israeli rabbinical program of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
