From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

What does it mean to be blessed without knowing it, especially in a period permeated by suffering and perceived meaninglessness? Today, reading these two parashot together yields some incredible insights into how we can reframe our perspectives, cultivate gratitude, and actively build a better reality for ourselves. About Michael Rosemberg Michael Rosemberg is a rising senior in the Joint Program...

I need all of you to join me on a sports-nerd journey, for a second, because the Knicks just won their first championship since 1973. I’m aware this may not be the right crowd for this, but my parents are from New York, and as the famous song says, “I was born a Knicks fan, it’s genetic.” To say this championship meant a lot to New York and the Knicks would be an understatement, but what really ma...

We all love closure. We would all love to know that a danger we had worried about has passed, that we can exhale. All good. All safe. Peace. Nothing to worry about anymore. Open a bottle of wine. Rejoice. Sometimes that happens. And other times, perhaps most times, it does not. How do we do life when the closure we wish for is not to be had? That is a question for us in our personal lives. That is...

Singing God’s Words: The Meaning and Experience of Chanting Torah Drawing from his book, Singing God’s Words: The Performance of Biblical Chant in Contemporary Judaism, the first in-depth study of the meaning and experience of chanting Torah among contemporary American Jews, Rabbi Summit discusses how and why a growing number of American Jews see the chanting of Torah as one of the most authentic...

The many aspects of the prayer  Aleinu There’s no other prayer in the entire Jewish liturgy as fascinating as the Aleinu with its rich history and meaning on one hand, and melodies and Mi Sinai tunes on the other. This Shabbat we’ll exam a very ancient prayer that in the Middle Ages caused our people persecution and censorship for the famous line that we no longer recite. But Aleinu is not just th...

What is your word cloud? What are the leading words that take in how you feel about your life?   Our reading this week reminds us of the very intimate connection between  word and world . The words we speak create the world we live in. Our word cloud becomes us, who we are.   The Israelites’ word cloud: “Why did you take us out of Egypt? We used to eat fish for free in Egypt, cucumbers, melons, le...

I want to talk to you this morning about a pivotal moment, a fork in the road moment, faced by the greatest rabbi who ever lived, Maimonides. And while we are not Maimonides, and we live in a very different time and place, we all face our own version of Maimonides’s moment. His story has so much to teach us.

Please do yourself a favor. Listen to the commencement address  that country star Eric Church recently gave at the University of North Carolina. It’s 18 minutes—and very much worth our time. Church offers that there are what he calls "six strings" to a life  well lived . If all six strings are properly tuned, our life can be a beautiful song. If any one of those strings is not properly t...

May 23, 2026

Last week, we cut Eder’s hair for the first time in celebration of his third birthday. As he grows, Solomon and I find ourselves thinking more intentionally about the kind of parents we hope to be. How do we offer the scaffolding and boundaries that help a child to flourish? What does it mean to guide with love, clarity, and presence? What does it mean to be a  good  parent?   As it turns out, Sha...

Author and social entrepreneur Joshua Foer is the co-founder of several initiatives to make Jewish learning and cultural exploration accessible worldwide, including Sefaria, the open-access library of Jewish texts, Lehrhaus, a community hub in Somerville, the Jewish film and TV production company Leviathan, and the design competition Sukkah City. He is also the co-founder of Atlas Obscura and auth...

In his new book  A Time to Gather , our friend and multiply published bestselling author, Bruce Feiler, delves into the role of rituals in our lives, how traditional old and innovative new rituals might work together, and our empowered role in creating them. In this podcast, he offers a one-sentence recipe for the diversity of innovative rituals that help and heal, that anchor and inspire: Somethi...

May 16, 2026

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England, only to return in 1656, three-and-a-half centuries later. William Shakespeare published his works between 1589 and 1613. Except for perhaps a smattering of crypto-Jews, 275 years prior to his birth, 40 years past his death, there was no Jewish presence in England. Dr. Stephen Greenblatt, in his  introduction to the Norton Shakespeare , notes that Elizabeth...

I recently sent Solomon to the store. He came back with everything I asked him to purchase, but I sent himback because he mistakenly bought Children’s Tylenol with red dye #40. As he headed out, I started bath time with the kids. Eder, my soon-to-be three-year-old, was happily drawing on the tub with his “dots”—he is obsessed with these Crayola “bath dropz” which are little tabs of concentrated dy...

Last week, toward the end of our recorded class together, Elias asked the question, “In the past 45 minutes of talking to each other, have any of us changed our minds?” The answer was a clear, “No.” While we had conducted a respectful conversation, the truth is, that each of us remained committed to the same positions and principles with which we had begun the conversation. Which got me thinking…...

Aliza, thank you so much!! Through the Years is so beautiful. It gives voice to a yearning so many of us share—a longing for love that lasts. We want our relationships with our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, our siblings, our friends, our work and our community, to last through the years: enriched—not eroded—by time. We value through the years. We want it. But can we live it?

Out of the  driest halakhic dispute  comes the juiciest of questions.   The dry halakhic dispute: If you miss counting the omer one night, can you count the omer the next night with a blessing?   One side answers this question no. If you miss a night, you blow the opportunity to do the mitzvah.   The other side answer this question yes. Let it go. You have nothing to apologize for. Just count the...

Several months ago my wife Shira shared that she was concerned that I was not getting enough protein or fiber in my diet. Her concerns were valid. I am basically a vegetarian, so I am a bit protein-challenged. And I had no idea what fiber is, or how to get enough of it. So Shira connected me to a new AI best friend: ChatGPT’s Nutrition Tracking Assistant. Every day I would log everything I ate, ev...

Usually, in the Jewish calendar and in the Jewish canon, redemption comes top down. In the Exodus story, God brings about redemption with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with ten plagues and signs and wonders. In the creation of the State of Israel that we marked with Yom Haatzmaut this week, the Israel Defense Forces brings about the creation and the continued existence of the Jewish state...

What does Jewish history—its incredible heaviness (Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron) and its incredible inspiration (Yom Ha’atzmaut)—ask of me? Does the passage of time affect the answer to that question? We are 81 years from the Holocaust. We are in the midst of yet another war with Iran and its proxies. What is our current responsibility to the Shoah and to the State of Israel? If we choose to dise...

From the very moment the downed airman landed in Iran after ejecting from his plane, he knew the clock was ticking. He knew that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would be hunting for him. He knew that local tribes might find him first. He knew that if he were caught by the enemy, it would dramatically complicate an already complicated war. He was concussed. He was injured. And he was trained...

What do you  want  to be known for? That is a question only you can answer.   What  are  you known for? That is a question you cannot answer. That is a question that can only be answered by other people.   The difference between what we  want  to be known for, and what we  are  known for, is the work we are called upon to do to become ever better versions of ourselves.   That is the Torah of a tho...

Please enjoy this special Shabbat morning sermon with Amy Schectman, CEO of 2Life Communities. Amy teaches us about optimal aging and the liberation that is possible when we orient ourselves around living in and building community. About Amy Schectman Amy has served as the CEO of 2Life Communities for over a decade where she successfully launched an aggressive expansion campaign to fill gaps in th...

On the Shabbat of Chol Hamoed Pesach (April 4), we encounter a curious reading:  Shir Hashirim , Song of Songs . If you have never really studied it, you might think, “ Oh, that is the Bible’s famous love story. On the festival of Passover, a springtime of renewal, we read about love. How lovely .” You would think that only if you haven't read the book.   If you read  Shira Hashirim , it is no...