Category: History

The Mitzvah of Crossing Our Inner Jordan (P. Re'eh)

8/2/2026

We haven't yet reached our destination. We still act like travelers battling traffic, anxiety, regrets, cruelty, endless customer-service hold times, and whatever else we carry within.

We'll be our best when we reach our destination, we tell ourselves. But what are we waiting for? Isn't the destination we await already within?

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.

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.

Hearing the Unheard (P. Vayishlah)

11/30/2025

Sometimes received religious traditions fail to hear the voice of suffering. Even worse, received traditions can suppress the voice of suffering.

It happens because every religion, by definition, titrates high principle through inherently limited and flawed human capacity.

What is our duty in response?

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.

About Our Spring Series: "Community Conversations" About the Mideast

3/19/2025

Israel evokes inspiration, dismay, pride, anger, blessing, suffering, love and hate. The State of Israel and the Mideast, including the ongoing crisis in Palestinian life, deeply touch the heart of everyone in and near Jewish life. Yet rarely do we discuss them openly. Too often such matters are avoided like a Third Rail, or suppressed, or relegated to quiet corners. Let's change that.

The Moral Arc Discovered (P. Vaera)

1/20/2025

No liberation is easy. Each begins with a promise that seems too good to be true. Even a promise can seem fanciful during the squeeze of hurt or bondage – like a fantasy, or a delusion. If there's a moral arc at all, at first it can seem out of reach.

So it was for Dr. King. So it was for Moses. So it is for every liberation and transformation.

Rabbi's Corner – December 2024: The Most Important Light

12/1/2024

December sets Jewish sights toward Hanukkah – a holiday that many of us treat as a minor commemoration suited mainly to children. Even in my early years of rabbinical school, I believed that Hanukkah was no big deal.

How wrong I was – and I want to share my personal story (and Hanukkah's historic story) precisely now, when public visibility and pride in Jewish life both feel especially vital and loaded.

<<Previous

The Mitzvah of Crossing Our Inner Jordan (P. Re'eh)

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)

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

Hearing the Unheard (P. Vayishlah)

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

About Our Spring Series: "Community Conversations" About the Mideast

The Moral Arc Discovered (P. Vaera)

Rabbi's Corner – December 2024: The Most Important Light

Categories

Archives

Mailing Address

Worship

Contact Us