Sermons

09/29/2018

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 and animate his sense that the world has no justice, no protection, and no meaning. The righteous suffer and…
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09/22/2018

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 very significant about the transition we are meant to undertake at this time. The most important brother and sister in…
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09/19/2018

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 was none other than Sigmund Freud himself who chose to publish this paper anonymously because its subject was not one…
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09/11/2018

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 the car zoomed away to squealing tires. When the dust settled, boxes containing Pesach china for twenty-five people were…
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09/10/2018

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 surely be arrested based on what he would say. He knew that if he stayed home, he would surely…
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09/08/2018

Nitzavim 5778: “Why Courage Matters”

In 1970, David Ifshin was president of the National Student Association and an activist in the movement to end United States involvement in the Vietnam War. In one of the most controversial and extreme actions undertaken by opponents of the war, Ifshin was part of a delegation of American students and activist that traveled to Hanoi where they…
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07/21/2018

Devarim 5778: “How?”

One of my teachers pointed out that two of the most common criticisms of Orthodox Judaism directly contradict each other. One criticism is that Orthodoxy is a fossil, never changing and frozen in the past. The other criticism is that we are constantly inventing new humras – new ways to be strict! “My parents’ Orthodox shul had mixed…
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07/07/2018

Pinchas 5778: “Transitions”

When I was in yeshiva I was told a cautionary tale of a rabbi who got into a great deal of trouble when he was caught with an entire filing cabinet in his office that was filled with pre-written eulogies for the entire board of directors for his shul. That story came to mind this week. …
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06/16/2018

Korach 5778: “Stay Away From the Tents of the Wicked”

Today is the yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. My grandmother was married to a veteran Lubavitcher Chassid who died before I ever got to know him, but I grew up knowing that my grandmother had an extensive extended Hassidic family and that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was a powerful inspiration to her. The first part of our daughter Sophie’s…
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06/02/2018

Baha’alotcha 5778: “The Menorah and Holistic Enlightenment”

Rabbi Aryeh Leib Steinman was the last living Lithuanian Talmudic scholar and rosh yeshiva whose education primarily took place in pre-War Europe. At the time of his death last winter, he was recognized as perhaps the most influential “gadol” – great rabbinic figure and religious authority for the Lithuanian – Litvak – branch of Haredi Judaism. He was…
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