Found In Translation: Weekly Divrei Torah and Sermons from the BJ Rabbis and Guest Teachers

What can a fragile sukkah teach us about what it means to feel held? On the first day of Sukkot, Rabbi Alex Braver contrasts the Torah’s image of the all-encompassing clouds of glory with the vulnerability of the sukkah itself. Precisely because our shelter is never perfect, he suggests, what we create and offer one another becomes all the more precious.

After Yom Kippur, how do we begin living the life we said we want to live? On the second day of Sukkot, Rabbi Becca Weintraub reflects on the physical mitzvot of the holiday (building the sukkah, holding the lulav and etrog, and immersing ourselves in ritual) and asks what practice we might carry with us once the hag is over.

What does it actually mean to do teshuvah? On Shabbat Shuvah, Rabbis Felicia Sol, Alex Braver, and Becca Weintraub together discuss the many ways Jewish tradition imagines the work of return. They remind us that there is no single path into teshuvah and invite us to discover which doorway might help us enter the work this year.

As the gates of Yom Kippur begin to close, how do we turn infinite possibility into choices about how we will actually live? In his Ne’ilah sermon, Rabbi Alex Braver explores what courage looks like in a moment of profound uncertainty. Drawing on the Torah’s command to “choose life,” a rabbinic parable about paths that wind through thickets and clear ground, and the Israelites’ fear while waiting...

Yom Kippur confronts us with mortality so that we might learn how to live. In her Ne’ilah sermon, Rabbi Felicia Sol reflects on Yom Kippur as a rehearsal for death and on the urgency and clarity that can emerge when we remember that our time is limited. Drawing on Jewish teachings about revelation, multiplicity, and a “heart of many rooms,” she invites us to resist a world organized around certain...

In her annual Yom Kippur letter to her children, Rabbi Becca Weintraub reflects on the creativity children bring to figuring things out and what that can teach us about Judaism. Also retelling the story of Rabbi Yishmael entering the Holy of Holies and unexpectedly being asked to bless God, Becca explores what happens when the carefully prescribed way of doing something gives way to an encounter n...

What might become possible if we loosen our need to be certain? In his Yom Kippur morning sermon, Rabbi Alex Braver begins with the ancient ritual of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, and an oath intended to ensure that every detail of the holiest service of the year would be performed exactly right. In a moment filled with purity tests, loyalty oaths, and demands for certainty, he asks whether do...

What if doubt is not the opposite of faith, but the opening through which transformation becomes possible? In her Yom Kippur morning sermon, Rabbi Felicia Sol explores two radically different rabbinic visions of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies. In one, a system built around precision and certainty leaves the High Priest and the elders suspicious of one another and weeping alone. In ano...

In her Kol Nidre sermon, Rabbi Becca Weintraub begins with the exhausting calculations many Jews make about when it feels safe to reveal who we are—and asks what becomes possible when, for these 25 hours, we no longer have to hide. Through the names Ivrim, B’nai Yisrael, and Yehudim, Becca explores the multiplicity built into Jewish identity itself. An Ivri can stand apart, cross into new territor...

On Kol Nidre, Rabbi Felicia Sol reflected on what happens when fear, shame, polarization, and communal litmus tests pressure us to hide or to reduce Jewish identity to a single story. Drawing on three ancient names for the Jewish people (Ivri, Yisrael, and Yehudi) Felicia explores the fullness of our inheritance. We are boundary-crossers willing to stand against the tide. We are wrestlers who refu...

On Rosh Hashanah, the rabbinic birthday of humanity, Rabbi Felicia Sol asks a question that feels especially urgent: Can we still have faith in the human project? Drawing on 2,000 years of teachings about the creation of humanity, Felicia explores what it means to contain both heaven and earth, extraordinary goodness and profound contradiction. In a polarized world that continually reduces people...

What does it mean to be an American Jew at a moment when our deepest commitments can seem to pull us in opposing directions? Beginning with BJ’s founding in 1825, Rabbi Felicia Sol traces the intertwined histories of American democracy and American Judaism and the freedoms that allowed Jewish life here to become diverse, creative, and chosen from love. She then turns to the challenges of the prese...

On Erev Rosh Hashanah, 25 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Rabbi Felicia Sol remembers the nearly 3,000 lives lost and reflects on BJ’s experience of that devastating day and its aftermath. From trying to reach members and loved ones to gathering for interfaith prayer and supporting first responders, Felicia recalls a city and community forever marked by those 102 minutes, inviting u...

On Erev Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Felicia Sol reflects on the threshold between the year that has ended and the one that has yet to be written. Drawing on a Talmudic teaching about giving thanks for the past and crying out for the future, she invites us to look honestly at what has been without allowing it to control us and to bring our moral and spiritual imagination to the future we still have a role...

In her Rosh Hashanah sermon at the family service, Rabbi Becca Weintraub explores an ancient rabbinic debate over whether human beings should have been created at all, and asks what we might say in humanity’s defense. Being human is complicated. We can be kind and impatient, generous and selfish, brave and afraid (sometimes all in the same day). But being created betzelem Elohim, in God’s image, m...

In a world increasingly shaped by despair, polarization, and binary thinking, Rabbi Alex Braver asks what Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of humanity, can teach us about reclaiming the fullness of being human. Drawing on 2,000 years of Jewish teachings about creation, Alex retells the creation story of humanity as a creature intended to be both earthly and heavenly, expansive and contradictory, unique...

On Erev Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Becca Weintraub reflected on the Jewish experience of time not as a straight line or an endless circle, but as a spiral. Each year we return to the same holidays, prayers, rituals, and sacred moments, but we do not return as exactly the same people. Drawing on Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s teaching that we “remember deliberately, anticipate responsibly, and act precisely...

Rabbi Alex Braver offers a blessing for renewal in all its forms. Some of us enter the new year amid exciting changes; others face new challenges, losses, or absences; and some may feel stuck, longing for change that seems far away. However we arrive at these Days of Awe, may we meet change with courage, recognize the possibility of newness within ourselves, and make 5787 a year of “good newness.”

In this week’s D’var Torah, Shira Bodnar, rabbinic intern (Family Life & Learning), reflects on inheritance—what we receive, what is missing, and what we create for those who come after us. Drawing on the ritual of the first fruits in Parashat Ki Tavo and her own search for her family’s stories, she invites us to use the work of Elul not simply to look backward, but to decide what we want to c...

In her Kabbalat Shabbat kavannah, Rabbi Felicia Sol draws on the music of Ishay Ribo and Dolly Parton to reflect on the work of Elul: acknowledging what is broken while remembering that we are already beloved. As we approach the Yamim Nora'im, she reminds us that we don’t have to wait until we are whole to return. We can bring our beautiful pieces and our frayed edges, and begin stitching ourselve...

In this week’s D’var Torah, Rabbi Alex Braver wrestles with what it means to love a tradition that is ancient, sacred, and imperfect. Confronting troubling texts in Parashat Ki Tetze, he asks how we can remain rooted in 3,000 years of tradition without ignoring its rough edges, ultimately suggesting that loving Torah, like loving a community, another person, or ourselves, means learning to love so...

Following the frightening disruption at Central Synagogue and the vandalism of our partner community Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem, Rabbi Alex Braver reflects on what it means to take real threats seriously without allowing fear to close us off from one another. Our tradition, he says, asks us to hold both: to build safe communities and attend to genuine fear, while continuing the sacred work of seei...

In this week’s D’var Torah, BJ Rabbinic Fellow Iliana Brodsky explores what Parashat Shoftim can teach us about the pursuit of justice and the damage done when systems meant to protect us are used for vengeance or personal gain. As we enter Elul, she shares that teshuvah and interpersonal repair are themselves acts of justice, helping us build not only stronger relationships, but a society more ca...

In her Friday night kavannah, Rabbi Becca Weintraub reflects on Shabbat as a kind of silent shofar, a sacred interruption that calls us to stop, listen, and ask whether we are living the lives we want to live. As we begin the journey toward the Yamim Noraim, she shared that Elul is an invitation to return to the deepest and truest parts of who we already are, not to become someone entirely new.

In this week’s D’var Torah, Cantor Dave Mintz explores how ritual can transform us through intention, attention, and repetition. Drawing on Parashat Re-eh as we approach Elul, he invites us to ask not simply whether a sacred practice speaks to us, but what it might be trying to awaken within us, and what it can teach us to notice that we cannot learn another way.