Category: Leadership

"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.

Gifts of Foresight (P. Bo)

1/18/2026

How do we perceive the world – as it is becoming or as a projection of ourselves?

How do we perceive the future? Do we see the future merely continuing a past or present, or brimming with possibility?

A rare few among us – the prophets of old, and modern visionaries like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – get out of their own way, defy inertia and see a becoming world long before the rest of us can.

Often society ignores them or mocks them. What if instead we listened and dreamed?

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.

Power Moves and the Rule of Law (P. Shoftim)

8/24/2025

Current concern about eroding the rule of law is perhaps unprecedented in modern history.
Jewish spirituality anticipated the concern 3,000 years ago, and ancient wisdom points our way forward now at this pivotal moment.

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.

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.

The Problem of Zealotry – Part 1 (P. Balak)

7/6/2025

Don Quixote comes to mind, though Cervantes meant his fictional character to be satire.

Too many zealots, both historical and modern, are anything but fictions or mere satire.

A zealot's charisma can captivate and intoxicate. A zealot's seeming commitment to principle can inspire – or blind. Adulation can reinforce the zealot's sense of rightness. Intoxicated by their own power and rightness, zealots may feel that they're special, even chosen – whatever the cost.

And often, almost always, there is a cost. Yet life is full of zealotry. Must we be zealots in turn?

Keeping Up With the Joneses (P. Korah)

6/22/2025

"Keeping Up with the Joneses" – no, not the 2016 Jon Hamm movie about a suburban couple that managed to get entangled in an international spy plot after suspecting that their new neighbors were secret agents.

I mean something far more important – and far more impactful.

We humans are wired to yearn, even to want what we don't have. There are reasons that the Tenth Commandment urges not to covet. It's when we become jealous when big problems – relational, spiritual, national and global – really get going.

A "Small" Teaching on Humility for the Chosen (P. Vayikra)

3/31/2025

Open any Torah and you'll see in the first word of Leviticus a letter written in tiny superscript.

It teaches us about what healthy humility is really all about.

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

Gifts of Foresight (P. Bo)

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

Power Moves and the Rule of Law (P. Shoftim)

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

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

The Problem of Zealotry – Part 1 (P. Balak)

Keeping Up With the Joneses (P. Korah)

A "Small" Teaching on Humility for the Chosen (P. Vayikra)

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