Sermon Archives

Seeing and Returning

This week’s Torah portion is kind of gross, isn’t it? But what seems like a rather arcane discussion of different kinds of oozing lesions, is, in fact, a model of community care, led by the Kohanim, the priests. Parshat Tazria has much to teach us about how we, as a nation of priests, can and must be present for the ones we might otherwise be tempted to look...Read more...

Kol Nidrei of Purim

אור זרוע לצדיק ולישרי לב שמחה

“A light is sown for the righteous and joy for the noble hearted”

With the agreement of God and of the community, in the heavenly council, and in the council of people, we give leave to pray with the transgressors among us.

Six months ago we gathered in this room...Read more...

Who Puts on The Cohen Gadol’s Pants? 

This week,  a friend of mine from college who has since become a Lutheran Minister, asked me to be a guest on her Bible podcast. The subject of the podcast was Pesach, and as we were logging off, I said, “Thank you so much, this is such a nice break from what I’ve been working on,” and she said, “What’s that?”   “I’ve...Read more...

Law is My Love Language

There’s a famous story about a famous rabbi, let’s say it was Rav Soloveitchik, though I think it has been told in different forms about different rabbis. His scholarship ranged from the highly theoretical to the extremely practical, and he could of course give detailed answers to any halakhic question. When his wife, Dr. Tanya Soloveitchik, was...Read more...

Say Little and Do Much

There are two great movie versions of the story of Yetziat Mitzraim, the exodus from Egypt: Steven Spielberg’s Prince of Egypt and Cecille B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments. Both draw heavily from midrashim to flesh out sparse details of the Torah’s own narrative. Both can be seen as a sort of modern midrash that reflects the concerns and priorities of the...Read more...

How to be an Abomination

My son Sam’s favorite place to be is up on the bima, and not only to get lollipops.  What he really wants to do is “give a Dvar Torah.” Actually, some of you might really like his drashas - they’re a little esoteric but very efficient. Any chance he gets, he climbs and yell his favorite words. “Excavator! Soccer! Tractor Ted!”  He takes the...Read more...

And You Shall Be a Blessing

I never get as much done “after the hagim” as I hope to. There are always too many deferred plans and meetings and tasks to accomplish when the holiday season comes to an end. I am sure I am not alone in having that experience. This year, I thought I would preempt the end of the holiday season by using the opportunity to speak to you on Shimini Atzeret morning to...Read more...

Education and Choice

When I was a teenager, whenever my friends did something slightly edgy, we would say to one another, “what you just did is illegal in 5 states.”  Well, times have changed and federalism is fun, and I can now add to the list of every-day joyful activities in our community that are illegal in certain jurisdictions. In particular, this shul exposes young...Read more...

Today

When David Ben Gurion made his first state visit to the United States as prime minister of Israel he gave a speech about the power of Jewish memory. How many Americans, he asked, know what day the Mayflower set sail for North America? How many Americans know what food was eaten on the Mayflower? And yet, every Jewish child knows precisely what day our...Read more...

That is Your Wisdom and Understanding
 

This week was my first “holiday” week at Ohev Sholom. Because the “holiday” in question was Tisha b’Av, I didn’t have to worry about cooking a big holiday meal, but preparing for Tisha b’Av was stll a major focus of the week. And, in the midst of my preparations for Tisha b’Av, I had stolen pockets of time to worry about...Read more...

Transitions

One of my favorite rabbinic jokes is particularly appropriate for a Shabbat such as this one. I first shared it publicly ten years ago, I shared it again a few weeks ago, and I’m going to share it here this morning:

There was once a new rabbi who, in the excitement and business of moving to a new community, somehow managed to show up on his first Shabbat...Read more...