Category: Parasha
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Toldot 5775: “By Your Sword Shall You Live”
Thankfully, when it was my turn for guard duty at Yeshivat Hamivtar, outside Efrat, the most interesting parts of the experience were the conversations with the reserve-soldiers who would be paired with us for a three-hour guard…
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Vayera 5775: “For I Know That He Will Command His Children”
Large volumes of Talmud on the shelf of my childhood home set our family’s home apart from the homes of every one of my friends. Relics from my father’s own past as a yeshiva student, they…
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Lekh Lekha 5775: “To a Land That I Will Show You”
Without question, the best job in all of Jewish folklore was the job of being the wagon driver of the Baal Shem Tov. Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hassidic movement, was a…
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Noach 5775: “The Inclination of the Human Heart is Towards Evil”
It has been noted that in ancient times, people were more bothered by the philosophical challenge of “rasha v’tov lo” the prospering of the wicked. In modern times, we tend to be more bothered by the…
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Bereishit 5775: “Islamic Terrorism & the ‘Shabbos App’”
A biology course that I took in college taught me something important about religion. Steven J. Gould, the great evolutionary biologist, taught a survey course at Harvard which he ambitiously called “A History of Life.” Professor…
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Yom Kippur 5775: “Love in a Time of Cholera”
Following Shacharit on Yom Kippur of 5610, in September 1849, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the famous and pious Vilna rabbi – founder of the Mussar Movement, dedicated to injecting the pursuit of ethical excellence into traditional Jewish…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5775: “To Conquer Time”
This was a difficult sermon to write. I had cleared a few hours one afternoon to write. I thought leaving the office and heading to a nearby coffee shop would present me with fewer distractions. I…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5775: “The Palace is in Flames”
Rabbis share professional advice with each other. There are “tricks of the trade” and received wisdom that we pass to each other from rabbi to rabbi, from year to year. One such professional rule of thumb is…
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Re’eh 5774: “If You Talk Here, Where Will You Pray?”
Some of you may remember the group of Christians who visited our shul before Tisha b’Av from Living Water Bible Camp in rural Wisconsin. This Christian camp had a summer program devoted to comparative religion and…
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Eikev 5774: “We Must Love One Another Or Die”
Three or four years ago, our community in Princeton had difficulty finding a babysitter for the last days of Pesach. Pesach coincided with Easter that year and our usual babysitters for Shabbat morning were all celebrating one of…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 