Category: Community

About the Blocked Heart (P. Eikev)

7/26/2026

Living with a fully open heart all the time can be uncomfortable – even risky. Anyone reading this probably knows this truth from life experience.

Most humans learn to protect their hearts. We learn so well that the feeling of a closed heart can be instinctive, automatic, effortless. We can become so inured that we might not know just how closed our hearts have become.

Maybe that's why, precisely now in the Jewish year, Torah calls us to open our hearts wide.

Rabbi's Corner: July 2026 – We Hold These Truths

7/1/2026

In a hot Philadelphia boarding house, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence that still reverberates 250 years later: "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."

If truths were self-evident in 1776, then we can expect to find them long before – including in Jewish wisdom many centuries earlier.

When We Lose It (P. Hukkat-Balak)

6/21/2026

Just about all humans have the propensity to lose it. Something gets our goat. Something rubs us wrong. Something deep inside ferments and bubbles over. A slow burn suddenly flames out.

When we judge harshly, or lose our temper, or lash out, it can seem like we are responding first and foremost to whatever "something" has our immediate attention – whatever offense, real or imagined, might provoke us in the moment.

In those moments, however, the emotional and spiritual reality can be hidden from us – unless we seek it with all our integrity and courage.

Jews in Space, and Where We Came From (P. Korach)

6/14/2026

As a comic, Mel Brooks has been cutting edge for decades. As a Jewish comic, Mel Brooks has been as traditional as they come. Amidst all his antics, Mel Brooks and his comedy transmit a core truth: a secret of Jewish continuity and strength always has been remembering where we come from.

Modern Jewish astronauts, unfathomable decades ago, have remembered what this week's Torah characters tragically forgot.

One Hundred Days of . . . (P. Shlah Lekha)

6/7/2026

We've begun the 100-day countdown to Rosh Hashanah. (Yes, it feels too early.)

So it's especially fitting that this week's Torah portion provides tradition's words for the Great Forgiveness attached to the end of Kol Nidre.

But forgiveness for what? What awesome and terrible thing needed divine forgiveness back then? What most needs it now?

"Let All God's People Be Prophets" (P. Beha'alotekha)

5/31/2026

Maybe we imagine that the ideal of Jewish spirituality turns most on a spiritual leader.

Throughout history, rank-and-file Jews often deferred to spiritual leaders – from Moses to modern professional rabbis. Often they imagined that heightened spiritual connectivity was the special calling and province of the few.

This week's Torah portion underscores that this pattern was wrong from the start.

Learning The Love That Matters Most (P. Aharei Mot-Kedoshim)

4/19/2026

There are things we learn from our parents.

There are things we learn from first encounters with the sacred.

There are things we learn only by going out into the world.

There are things we learn by walking a mile in others' shoes.

There are things we learn by overcoming the impulses of retribution and hatred.

Truly loving our neighbor as ourselves is the spiritual culmination of them all, the gift that only rough-and-tumble life experience can grant.

Third Spaces: Safe to Be, Safe to Become (P. Tazria-Metzora)

4/12/2026

Spiritual community is a vital Third Place – not home or work, nor totally public – that can help anchor, comfort and shape us. Like the Boston pub in "Cheers," spiritual community ideally is "where everybody knows your name / And they're always glad you came."

We might say likewise of secular clubs, volunteer groups and hangouts becoming less common in the digital society. But spiritual community is unique in how it calls us to be authentically and fully ourselves, warts and all – and then evolve.

When the Liberation Began (Passover 2026)

3/29/2026

As we have for many centuries, the Children of Israel will gather at Passover seders to celebrate the liberation of bygone days.

When we gather with family and friends, we would do well to ask what liberation is, and when the ancient liberation began.

Why? Because the answers bear pivotally on who we are and what Passover asks of us now.

Drilling Under Ourselves (P. Vayikra)

3/15/2026

Time and again, the world reminds us that we all are completely and utterly in it together.

Still we forget. Circumstances get the better of us. Reactions get the better of us. Leaders turn us off (or worse). We turn away from each other.

It's like drilling a hole in our shared lifeboat.

<<Previous

About the Blocked Heart (P. Eikev)

Rabbi's Corner: July 2026 – We Hold These Truths

When We Lose It (P. Hukkat-Balak)

Jews in Space, and Where We Came From (P. Korach)

One Hundred Days of . . . (P. Shlah Lekha)

"Let All God's People Be Prophets" (P. Beha'alotekha)

Learning The Love That Matters Most (P. Aharei Mot-Kedoshim)

Third Spaces: Safe to Be, Safe to Become (P. Tazria-Metzora)

When the Liberation Began (Passover 2026)

Drilling Under Ourselves (P. Vayikra)

Categories

Archives

Mailing Address

Worship

Contact Us