分类: High Holy Days

Rabbi's Corner – September 2025 & High Holy Days: #StrongerTogether

8/26/2025

It's true every year: The holy month of Elul is our portal into the Season of Meaning. These High Holy Days approach at a pivotal time in collective and global life. This moment asks both all our love and all our strength – including the strength to be vulnerable, deeply truthful, shimmeringly real, courageous and intrepid. We are #StrongerTogether – our theme for 5786.

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.

Holy Gear Shifts (P. Emor)

5/11/2025

As spiritual beings, we can understand life as a constant choice between inertia and change, letting things ride or deliberately altering them. We don't pay attention, or we do. We accept what is, or we try to act.

So it is with most things Jewish, especially Jewish time – a series of holy gear shifts throughout life.

On Love and War – Sermon for Yom Kippur 5785 (2024)

10/12/2024

Opinions and arguments. War. Antisemitism. Elusive hopes for peace. Pride and prejudice. Morality in the crosshairs. What we're about. What we want to be about. What we crave to be about. And back to opinions and arguments, and war, and antisemitism....

Amidst the swirling chaos of the year that's been, and so much hurt still ongoing, what keystones to Jewish spiritual life can secure our foundations? What can help keep our hearts open amidst all?

The Tunnel of Love – Sermon for Kol Nidre 5785 (2024)

10/11/2024

There are times in life that rivet us on what's core and strip away the rest. In those moments, we can enter a tunnel of love and be transformed. If we're purposeful, or lucky, we can experience these times long before our last time. We can experience Eckhart Tolle's secret to life: we can die before we die – so that we can live.

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.

Who's In? You're In. We're All In. (P. Netzavim-Vayeilekh)

9/22/2024

One of my favorite moments of the Jewish year is coming... and it's probably not what you think. There's a point on Yom Kippur when we come together as if to receive anew the ancient covenant, knowing that the very act of being together magnetizes that covenant.

But Torah's basis for this moment, in this week's portion, asks us to read it in a counter-intuitive way.

Blessed or Cursed? The Meaning We Make (P. Ki Tavo)

9/15/2024

We humans are meaning makers: our spirituality concerns not only what happens but also what we make of what happens. Every day of our lives, usually just below the surface of our awareness, we decide what matters most and what our choices say about us and our lives.

This sacred season rivets our focus on this often unconscious inner process – and how it utterly depends on what we say and do together.

"God is in the Details" (P. Ki Teitzei)

9/8/2024

We've probably heard the aphorism that "the devil is in the details." Leaving aside that classical Judaism doesn't really do "devil," spiritually the emphasis is backwards. Not the "devil" but God is in the details. The sacred inheres in our total showing up to our lives and the details of how we narrowcast our attention – especially during these precious days leading to Rosh Hashanah.

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Rabbi's Corner – September 2025 & High Holy Days: #StrongerTogether

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

Holy Gear Shifts (P. Emor)

On Love and War – Sermon for Yom Kippur 5785 (2024)

The Tunnel of Love – Sermon for Kol Nidre 5785 (2024)

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

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

Who's In? You're In. We're All In. (P. Netzavim-Vayeilekh)

Blessed or Cursed? The Meaning We Make (P. Ki Tavo)

"God is in the Details" (P. Ki Teitzei)

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