From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

September 24, 2022

This summer Shira and I tried a new move. We started riding e-bikes. An e-bike is like a regular bike, with a seat, handlebars, two wheels, shifting gears. You pedal, and the bike moves. There is only one difference. The e in e-bike is for electricity. There are three settings, and you can give your bike a jolt of a little electricity, a moderate amount, or a whole lot of electricity when the goin...

For my money, the best, simplest, shortest expression of the complexity of Israel remains the opening chapter of Ari Shavit’s classic My Promised Land.  Shavit’s grandfather was among the first Zionists who settled Eretz Yisrael. Shavit himself served in the Israeli army as a paratrooper. The book opens: “For as long as I can remember, I remember fear. Existential fear.” Two pages later: “For...

September 10, 2022

We bring two great thinkers to one of the Jewish people’s biggest challenges and opportunities: reclaiming Zionism. Danny Gordis’ excellent and thoughtful piece shows how, shockingly, Zionism has become a dirty word among certain segments of the American Jewish community. There are American synagogues today who are ideologically opposed to Zionism. There are rabbinical students today who...

What is true for our Torah portion this morning is also true for every human being who has ever lived, including all of us here today. Also true for our country. What we all have in common is complexity : our Torah, our nation, each of us, contains multitudes. Charlie spoke with a wisdom beyond his years about the complexity in our parsha . The same parsha which begins with “Justice, justice shall...

In 1961, Sandy Greenberg was wallowing in despair. Up until that moment, his life had been full of promise. He was brilliant, musical, and athletic. In high school, he was elected president of the student council and of his senior class, upon graduation, he won a full scholarship to Columbia University in New York and was pursuing his dreams of becoming a lawyer. He had close friends and was datin...

Serena Williams.  Everyone, even the most sports illiterate, knows Serena Williams.  Ever since she hit the professional stage in 1996, she has dazzled the world with her strength, skill, determination, and success.  She won her first Grand Slam at 17, spent 319 weeks—more than 6 years—ranked as the No. 1 player in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association, has held all four Grand...

August 13, 2022

I have a confession to make. Many of you know that I love fishing—a passion I discovered after I met Solomon. But I haven’t been completely truthful. Because, you see, it’s not just that I love fishing, I particularly love beating Solomon at fishing. Ever since our first fishing trip together, I have always managed to catch more fish and better fish than Solomon. From the beginning, Solomon joked...

July 30, 2022

Dr. John Fryer was a man of uncommon brilliance.  As a child, he learned so quickly and completely that his teachers called him a prodigy.  He was just five years old when he started second grade, 15 when he graduated from high school, and 19 when he graduated college and enrolled at Vanderbilt University Medical School where he became one of the youngest students ever to study psychiatr...

Rabbi David Wolpe tells the story of the time that Ralph Waldo Emerson went to church one Sunday morning and was displeased with the minister’s sermon. The minister revealed nothing of his own life story, Emerson complained.  He just talked about ideas and texts. Tell me how your life experience connects with my life experience connects with our life experience. In that spirit, I want to talk...

July 9, 2022

Chaplain, Colonel Larry Bazer shares some special experiences of serving as a full-time National Guard Chaplain in light of Parshat Korah and our nation’s 246th birthday, as well as personal insights regarding the last few challenging years for our country, as he oversaw the National Guard's religious response during the pandemic and the tumult of these last few years.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law which required citizens to demonstrate “proper cause” to carry a firearm in public.  Yesterday the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.  Next week, the Court will hear West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and will almost certainly strike down the right of the EPA enact rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to f...

Do you know what the word dox means—d-o-x? I had never heard of the word before this week. I learned its meaning as our community has encountered something you might have heard of, a website called The Mapping Project of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanction) Boston. The dictionary definition of dox is to publish private or identifying information about a person or organization on the internet with m...

This past week in the holy city of Boston, a miracle happened not once but twice. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Paul McCartney, who is eleven days shy of 80 years old, rocked on at Fenway Park. Fenway was jammed to the rafters, and this 80-year old singer wowed and captivated a full park for two and a half hours . Thirty songs. Did I mention that he is 80? How does an 80-year-old still have the...

Is self-care (the agenda of summer rest, renewal and relaxation) a Jewish value? Did Jeremiah go swimming? Did Rabbi Akiva go to the beach? Did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi go off the grid so that he could recharge? Did Elijah ever need “me time”? Jewish sources talk about learning (Talmud) and doing (ma’aseh).  Do Jewish sources value doing neither of those in the interests of recharging? How does ou...

Shavuot 5782 June 6, 2022

Shabbat Shalom, Everyone! What a morning! I am utterly overwhelmed and so deeply blessed to be a part of this truly special community. As I reflect upon what has been most important to me on this extraordinary journey as an educator, I’d like to share three of the “principles” that have motivated and guided me.  But first, a disclaimer: You may hear things about me that will surprise you. As...

For many decades, Rabbi Simon Greenberg would teach his students at the Seminary: Never preach about the binding of Isaac, Genesis 22 , the Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah. A parent sacrifice his child? Who would do a thing like that? A parent place some principle above the life and health and welfare of their own child? Who would do a thing like that? The whole premise of the bi...

How do we think about the person whose views are not only different from our own, but antithetical to our own? What they stand for, we stand for the exact opposite. And yet we share a planet, we share a country, we share a community, perhaps we even share a family. They are not changing. We are not changing. They are here. We are here. How do we see this other human being on the other end of a con...

Uvalde. Buffalo. Santa Ana. Bomb threats at JCCs (including our own). If the Messiah were ever going to come to fix our broken world, now would be a good time. On Shabbat we are going to take a look at three texts that deal with the Messiah. The first is an Elijah story. Elijah famously tells a rabbi searching for the Messiah that you can find him in a leper colony, among the most diseased and imp...

If you ever asked Barry Shrage, the long-time former head of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, how he was doing, he always answered in an utterly unique way. In all my life, I have never heard anyone else answer this way. He would always answer: Never better . Never better. What a great response. It is unique. It rhymes. Never better. It is short and to the point. It radiates positive and hopefu...