Our Democracy
I have always loved Election Day. The ideal of having an engaged citizenry collectively come together—millions of us, across the states—recognizing that our well-being is wrapped up in one another’s; that our lives are, for better or for worse, in one another’s hands (as made all the more clear by this pandemic); and that we […]
Joy and Sorrow in Our Communities
This past week we celebrated our first Bat Mitzvah since the start of the pandemic with a beautiful service led by our Bat Mitzvah, Emma Salzman. Her Torah portion was Noah, perhaps one of the most well-known narratives in the history of storytelling. I sometimes find these to be the most challenging around which to […]
The Strangest Book in the Bible
This past week at our weekly Torah study together in the midst of our Shabbat services, we studied the book of Ecclesiastes. (Yes, Ecclesiastes, or, Kohelet, its Hebrew name, is indeed in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. It is located in the third of three sections of the Tanakh, following (1) the Torah, i.e., the Five Books of […]
Sukkot: A Reflection on Our Transience and Impermanence
With the High Holidays behind us, we are going to return to our minhag (custom) of sending out weekly summaries of our Shabbat morning Torah conversations. As a reminder, each week during our Shabbat morning service, we engage with a text from our weekly Torah portion and ask, how does this text apply to our lives? In […]
Kehillah Kedoshah: Sacred Community
Yom Kippur Sermon 5781 Al shlosha d’varim ha’olam omed. On three things the universe stands. Al ha’torah, va’al ha’avoda, v’al gemilut chasadim. On Torah; on Avodah, worship or service, and on gemilut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness. So says pirkei avot, the teachings of our ancestors, that sacred entry in our canon On Rosh Hashanah, we […]