Category: Ethics And Law

Balance After Injustice – Sermon for Yom Kippur 5787 (2026)

9/21/2026

From the Holocaust to wrongful convictions to identity-based hate, uncountable wrongs have unfolded all around us.

We needn't personally be the victims of personal wrongs, or large-scale wrongs, to carry them in our hearts. Plus, it's likely that we all carry our own personal hurts from wrongs done to us.

Ideally repentance happens. Ideally there are apologies and, where possible, repair. But if we're not made whole – if recipients of wrongs and injustices aren't validated – what then? How can we re-balance after unrequited injustice?

It's a question for the ages – and for exactly now.

Our Cities of Refuge (P. Matot-Masei)

7/5/2026

It's summer travel season, which aligns with the approaching spiritual season nine weeks ahead.

Wonderful as travel can be, travelers can tire from traveling – the need to get somewhere, the hurry up and wait, the grip of the wheel. Travelers get bumped and bruised, hot and bothered.

We all are travelers – whether vacationers or journeyers on the road of life. We all need refuge from things that go sideways on our way.

Maybe to our surprise, this refuge isn't a rest stop, or community – but something else entirely.

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.

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.

Every Day, A Voice Comes Forth (Shavuot)

5/17/2026

Where does our "belly barometer" come from? How do we know what is just and right?

This week, the Torah cycle suspends for Shavuot, our festival anniversary of the revelation at Sinai, and our collective communion with the One we call God.

Though our community opted not to schedule a Shavuot celebration this year due to Memorial Day weekend (we'll have a mini-Yizkor online), it's still an important important chance to consider our source of revelation, justice and rightness.

Our Greatest Interests of All (P. Behar-Behukotai)

5/3/2026

Money can be a sensitive subject, which is one reason Torah bans charging interest among our people. (The Qur'an does the same for Muslims.)

Torah and Qur'an are aiming at far more than money: after all, most of us don't lend money.

This mitzvah is really about relationships and right use of power, which spiritually are far more important than money. This mitzvah aims at the heart of our greatest interest of all.

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.

The Western Wall is Not a Golden Calf (P. Ki Tisa)

3/1/2026

I hadn't planned to write a D'var Torah this week. Rather than write a new D'var Torah this week, I planned to repost last year's teaching about the Golden Calf in civil society. But developments in Israel compel me to speak – clearly and bluntly – to affirm Judaism's core values of pluralism and gender equality. At stake are Israel's identity and the Western Wall's spirituality itself, lest each risk becoming just another Golden Calf.

Justice and a World Blind and Toothless (P. Mishpatim)

2/8/2026

In a world of passive aggression, physical and emotional aggression, and mounting societal outrage, there can be instinctive allure to Torah's "eye for an eye" maxim about justice.

Except it doesn't mean what the millennia made it out to mean. What principles should guide us in addressing bad behavior? When – if ever – does "like" merit "like"?

"The Way They Will Walk" (P. Yitro)

2/1/2026

When I was a Harvard graduate student lo many years ago, person-sized Biblical words about law looked down on me every day from atop one of the academic buildings.

They look down on me still – and on you, and on our country.

<<Previous

Balance After Injustice – Sermon for Yom Kippur 5787 (2026)

Our Cities of Refuge (P. Matot-Masei)

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

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

Every Day, A Voice Comes Forth (Shavuot)

Our Greatest Interests of All (P. Behar-Behukotai)

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

The Western Wall is Not a Golden Calf (P. Ki Tisa)

Justice and a World Blind and Toothless (P. Mishpatim)

"The Way They Will Walk" (P. Yitro)

Categories

Archives

Mailing Address

Worship

Contact Us