Category: 5779
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VaYishlach 5779: “Striving and Prevailing”
“In the Beginning God created Heaven and Earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be…
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Toldot 5779: “Exiled Among Nations”
At this time tomorrow, in 24 hours and fifteen minutes it will be the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, one hundred years to the minute that the First World War came to…
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Vayera 5779: “This Was the Sin of Your Sister Sodom”
When Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev was appointed the rabbi of Berditchev, he sat down with the communal leaders to work out the terms by which they would guide the community. The communal leaders, wishing to protect their…
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Lekh Lekha 5779: “What’s in a Name?”
On Thursday afternoon a delegation of DePaul University undergraduates came to visit the shul. They are brought here each year by their professor as a field trip for a course they are taking on Chicago’s Jewish community. They…
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Bereishit 5779: “Nothing but Evil All the Time”
The Torah is not a book of theology written by people. It is a book of anthropology written by God. The Torah is likewise not a book of philosophy and is not a book of history…
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Shabbat Hol HaMoed Sukkot 5779: “A Wicked One Endures Despite His Wickedness”
Hearing the book of Kohelet read can be a dark and sobering experience. It describes a world without justice and a world without protection and a world without meaning. Two phenomena in particular bother the author of Kohelet…
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Ha’Azinu 5779: “Synesthesia”
Here we are again. It can be exhausting to jump into Shabbat and then Yom Tov so soon after the intensity of the yamim ha’nora’im but for all of that exhaustion, I believe that there is something…
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Yom Kippur 5779: “Radiance”
In 1914 the European journal of psychoanalysis published an anonymous article. The editors justified printing the article because the author was “personally known to them” and had experience in psychoanalysis. It was subsequently revealed that the author…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5779: “Yesterday’s Paper Telling Yesterday’s News”
Almost ten years ago as we prepared to host our first Pesach sedarim in Princeton, a car pulled up in front of our home and stopped with a screech in a cloud of dust. Moments later…
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Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5779: “Speaking Poetry to Power”
In 1937, at the height of Stalin’s terror, the great Russian author Boris Pasternak was invited to attend a conference of Soviet writers. He knew that if he attended and participated in the conference, he would…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 