Category: Character

Unbend the Knee (P. Ki Tisa)

3/9/2025

I rarely engage with artificial intelligence, but recently I asked ChatGPT to depict the "Golden Calf of modern society." This image was ChatGPT's response.

For Persia in the Purim story we commemorate this week, the Golden Calf was Haman, the xenophobic prime minister. For our spiritual ancestors in Exodus days, it was literally a Golden Calf – a repudiation of the Ten Commandments.

This week's confluence of the two has much to teach us.

Giving, Up (P. Terumah)

2/23/2025

In liberal Jewish life, mitzvah often is translated as "good deed" and tzedakah as "charity." To English speakers, both sound optional.

In Jewish life, however, they're not optional. They are mandatory and essential to Jewish continuity and resilience. The whole point is to rise, and lift others as we do, and together raise up the holy.

Come to Narcissist (P. Bo)

1/26/2025

We all have emotional and psychological vested interests in seeming externally to be our best selves. Most of us, we hope, respond to these impulses by actually trying to be our best selves in the world. Our insides aspire to match our outsides.

For others, the optics of manipulated perception are the primary reality or even only reality they recognize or allow others to see.

The effects on communities and society can be brutal, and we must stand up to them.

Showing Up, Taking Responsibility (P. Vayigash)

12/29/2024

It's not my fault. Why should I take responsibility for any part of it? We're all prone to say so.

Yet our penchant to claim rightness has spiritual and practical limits. Our acts and omissions ripple out far beyond their space and time, and Jewishly we claim collective responsibility for much seemingly beyond ourselves.

Just ask the guy whom Jews are named for.

The Flags Up Front (P. Toledot)

11/24/2024

We're all global citizens of a shared and fragile planet. And at the same time, Jewish life's public vitality – and with it, global diversity and genuine belonging – tends to ebb and flow in cycles of societal turbulence. Yet again, Jews and other minorities face a recurring existential question: who are we relative to where we are? In the U.S. flag's stars and stripes, there is still enough starlight for all of us.

Our Shared Heart – Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5785 (2024)

10/3/2024

Judaism's time-tested superpower is community – not because it's easy, not because we're similar, but because community is the mainstay channel for the kind of existential love that heals society. This love is possible because spiritually, we share one heart. It's equally true if times are tough and even more important then – but also harder.

What the World Needs Now – Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785 (2024)

10/2/2024

Rabbi David introduces our High Holy Day theme for 5785 amidst the anxiety of this hour. We remember that the core mitzvah of Jewish life is to love – not to be loved – come what may. And we remember that, even when deep pain causes us to lose this elemental love, we can find it anew.

Avinu Malkeinu: The Greatness to Lead Small (P. Shoftim)

9/1/2024

In a few short weeks, Jews worldwide will gather to proclaim Avinu Malkeinu – Our Parent, Our Sovereign. The Jewish notion of a "sovereign," whether divine (God) or mortal (king or queen), hails from this week's Torah portion that is laser-focused on the interplay of justice and humility.

Because too often the two don't go together.

The Neck's Cure is the Heart (P. Eikev)

8/18/2024

Week by precious week, we're shown how we strayed from our best selves. Slowly at first, this season hints, asks, presses, cajoles, demands and then forces us to see some things that maybe we labor mightily not to see. We turn away, perhaps with the whole of our lives or just a part. Or we turn away from truths about ourselves.

In Torah's words, we become "stiff necked." This season's call to turn back means that we must our neck, and this turn begins... on our hearts.

What's Love Got to Do With It? (P. Vaethanan)

8/11/2024

Jewish life centers on love – not like, honor or respect, but love. Love is the core of our creed (V'ahavta), Torah's literal center ("Love your neighbor as yourself"), and the most repeated admonition in sacred Jewish text ("love the stranger, for you were a stranger").

But how can love be commanded? How can any true love be required, especially if the world feels unlovely to us? What kind of love is that?

Turns out, this kind of love is most important of all.

<<Previous

Unbend the Knee (P. Ki Tisa)

Giving, Up (P. Terumah)

Come to Narcissist (P. Bo)

Showing Up, Taking Responsibility (P. Vayigash)

The Flags Up Front (P. Toledot)

Our Shared Heart – Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5785 (2024)

What the World Needs Now – Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785 (2024)

Avinu Malkeinu: The Greatness to Lead Small (P. Shoftim)

The Neck's Cure is the Heart (P. Eikev)

What's Love Got to Do With It? (P. Vaethanan)

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