Category: Character

Between Fleeting and Forever: The Art of Time (P. Noah)

10/19/2025

Our experience of time is not linear. Whatever a clock tells us, long stretches can pass in a blink while some moments seem to last forever.

As we enter our annual calendar's peak autumn and the colder, darker months, perhaps we can open a window on how the Biblical Noah and his family felt aboard the ark. What might we learn about spiritualizing our experience of time?

Our Hidden Courage – Sermon for Yom Kippur 5786 (2025)

10/2/2025

We've explored the kinds of strength we need to weather troubled times and better our lives –strength both soft and tough, moral and flexible, personal and communal.

Now we tap into courage, which sometimes seems most hidden when we need it most. The hidden path to our inner courage – to face who we are and truly better our lives – turns out to be
shorter and closer than we might imagine:

As close as our fragile hearts, and as clear as what we most fear to lose.

Our Circle Dance – Sermon for Kol Nidre 5786 (2025)

10/1/2025

For all of modern society's focus on individual rights and choice, even in the internet age, we still are carbon-based creatures who utterly need each other. Community has long been one of Jewish life's superpowers, but today hangs in the balance, buffeted by tides of social change and amnesia about who we really, truly are.

For Whom We Stand (P. Ha'azinu)

9/28/2025

On this far end of Yom Kippur, we remember in our bones that all life goes the way of all life. It is true that all life ultimately dies, and equally true that all that dies once lived. We also know that in very real ways, all that died lives on in us, through us, in the air we breathe, in the values we uphold.

We who dared to touch death on Yom Kippur rise into new life and new joy as we near Sukkot (Season of our Joy). And then the cycle begins again – exactly as before, and utterly changed.

Our Sovereign Power – Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5786 (2025)

9/22/2025

What do you make sovereign in your life? What truly rules you? Are you totally satisfied with your answer? If you're human, then probably not – and the Power of Creation imbues us with power to choose, to re-center, to change. After all, we are made "in the divine image," with sacred attributes. If God can create and transform, so can we.

We must start here, with our sovereign powers of choice and change. Otherwise, the travails of the heart and travails of our world can seem beyond our power to repair.

We can do it. We have 3,500 years of tools for wise living and societal repair, and our ancestors' strength courses through us. We are #StrongerTogether.

"Be Strong and Courageous" (P. Vayeilekh)

9/21/2025

In this first Torah portion of the new spiritual year, traditionally read between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur during most years, Moses prepares our spiritual ancestors for transition into new leadership (Joshua) and a new journey (into the Land of Promise).

His way of doing so speaks to us exactly now, as we begin this new year with new journeys of our own.

To Kick Bad Habits, Watch Time (P. Ki Teitzei)

8/31/2025

Source: Harvard Health (2022)

We all have impulses and habits that we're not proud of and don't well serve us. Sometimes we can take them on directly. But especially if we load our habits with negative emotions and self-judgments, focusing on our habits and impulses can only reinforce them.

There's another way – and as the holy month of Elul begins, it comes right on time.

Recovery After Disappointment, and a Pregnant Moses (P. Vaethanan)

8/3/2025

We've all known disappointments – some deeply personal, others collective and even global.

With 20/20 hindsight, we know that there's life after our disappointments, and even blessings. In the moment that life dashes our hopes and dreams, however, often we forget.

This week's Torah portion offers profound lessons about recovery after life doesn't go our way, with a striking image to help us – a pregnant Moses.

Yes, you read that correctly. Read on.

Rabbi's Corner – August 2025: From 'Oy' to 'Joy'

8/1/2025

August brings peak summer and then, subtly at first, transition. Jewishly we pass through grief's gate of Tisha b'Av onto the seven-week runway to Rosh Hashanah. We will launch this cycle's High Holy Day runway series. At full moon, Tu b'Av and the Shabbat of love and comfort will greet us as a needed balm to the heart.

The next new moon begins the holy month of Elul. The shofar will sound with strength. Our hearts will stir. We are called back. Remember who we really are. It's time.

Spiritual Vision – Now and Beyond Now (P. Matot-Masei)

7/20/2025

Last week, Israel's High Court of Justice ordered the Orthodox rabbinate of Israel to let women take rabbinic ordination examinations on the same terms as male applicants.

For thousands of years, Jewish life has evolved. Varying by issue and era, some evolutions have been fast, some glacially slow, some halting and non-linear, some seemingly "two steps forward and one step back."

This latest step by Israel's High Court of Justice reminds, as Israel's High Court often does, that Dr. King was right: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

It's on us to do the bending, and to know that we can, even when the path seems daunting – even impossible. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.

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Between Fleeting and Forever: The Art of Time (P. Noah)

Our Hidden Courage – Sermon for Yom Kippur 5786 (2025)

Our Circle Dance – Sermon for Kol Nidre 5786 (2025)

For Whom We Stand (P. Ha'azinu)

Our Sovereign Power – Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5786 (2025)

"Be Strong and Courageous" (P. Vayeilekh)

To Kick Bad Habits, Watch Time (P. Ki Teitzei)

Recovery After Disappointment, and a Pregnant Moses (P. Vaethanan)

Rabbi's Corner – August 2025: From 'Oy' to 'Joy'

Spiritual Vision – Now and Beyond Now (P. Matot-Masei)

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