Sermons

02/22/2014

Vayakhel 5774: “The Mishkan and the Wide World Beyond”

“The first six days after Shabbat are always the hardest.” I saw that quote and it strikes me as speaking to a question which is actually quite profound. What is the relationship between Shabbat and the work that we do during the other six days of the week? How should we feel when Shabbat ends and…
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02/15/2014

Ki Tissa 5774

The Septuagint, the ancient translation of the Torah into Greek, was written by 70 scholars who were locked into 70 different rooms and told to produce a translation of the Torah. Miraculously, they produced the identical translation. Each scholar had made the same adjustments and word choices when translating from Hebrew to Greek. We of…
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02/08/2014

Tetzaveh 5774

If I had a bell. I’d ring it in the morning/ I’d ring it in the evening, all over this land/ I’d ring out danger, I’d ring out warning/ I’d ring out love, between my brothers and my sisters/ All over this land. Pete Seeger wrote those lyrics with Lee Hayes over fifty years ago. Since Pete’s death two…
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11/23/2013

VaYeshev 5774: “Power Corrupts”

There was a rabbinic conference in Europe last week featuring representatives from the Council of European Rabbis, the Rabbinical Council of America, and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. This conference was the victim of some very unfortunate timing. Orthodox rabbis from three continents gathered and signed an agreement affirming the Israeli Chief Rabbinate as a moral “guiding light”…
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11/16/2013

VaYishlach 5774: “Place”

I once read a pop-psychology book that suggested that people either privileged sight or hearing as metaphors for comprehension. Someone who privileges vision might say things like, “I see what you’re saying” or “Is this clear to you?” Someone who privileges hearing would say, “I hear what you’re saying” or “Does this sound right to you?” The book…
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11/09/2013

VaYetzei 5774: “Prayer for the Government”

In 1872, the British scientist, Fancis Galton, formulated a clever way to test the efficacy of prayer. The British royal family, and Queen Victoria in particular, was the beneficiary of the prayers of millions of subjects of the British Empire. Every week, Anglican congregations in East Africa, the Caribbean, India, and across the United Kingdom recited prayers…
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11/02/2013

Toldot 5774

One of the most distinct features of Jewish history, as recorded in the Torah, is that numerous women suffered from infertility before eventually conceiving and giving birth to healthy children. Our matriarchs Sarah, Rivka, and Rachel struggled for a long time with infertility, and so did Hannah, the mother of Shemuel. The contemporary Bible Scholar,…
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10/19/2013

Vayera 5774: “Religious Humanism”

I received a fantastic email the other week: a list of 50 “intellectual jokes.” Apparently, I’m not such an intellectual because I didn’t understand all of the jokes. But I really liked this one: A linguist is someone who loves syntactic ambiguity more than most people. Syntactic ambiguity is a phrase or sentence that, no…
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09/28/2013

Bereishit 5774: “Kove’a Itim”

Why is Genesis in the Torah? It is a counter-intuitive question – how could the Torah not contain the account of Creation? The flood? The stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs? But Rashi begins his commentary to the Torah with this question and provides a famous answer. The Torah is a book of mitzvot –…
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09/14/2013

Yom Kippur 5774

Why does God want our prayers? We are fasting. We are tired. We are hungry and we are weak. But, despite our weariness, we come together in shul to pray for hour after hour. There is no other day in the year that is as filled with prayers as is Yom Kippur. What difference does…
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