Sermons
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I know two jokes about kohanim. This is the good one: A man walked up to his rabbi and said, “Rabbi, make me a kohen.” The rabbi responded, I’m so sorry, I can’t make you a kohen. The man then said, “I’ll give you $500 if you make me a kohen.” The rabbi just shook…
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When I was in high school I once picked up the Thanksgiving edition of the Village Voice and saw a humor column titled something like “Fifty things to be thankful for about living in America.” After many years I can only remember three of the items on the list. Reenacting our Civil War is considered…
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Sefer Vayikra has a bad reputation as a book without much plot. Perhaps for this reason, anytime there is narrative action in Sefer Vayikra it grabs so much of our attention and the death of Nadav and Avihu after they bring a “strange fire” has all of the features of a gripping story. On the…
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אור זרוע לצדיק ולישרי לב שמחה “A light is sown for the righteous and joy for the noble hearted” With the agreement of God and of the community, in the heavenly council, and in the council of people, we give leave to pray with the transgressors among us. Six months ago we gathered in this…
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The morning of August 11, 2008 began like any other. Sara went to a routine prenatal exam and I drove to Princeton to spend the day unpacking boxes in our new home. Minutes after I arrived in Princeton Sara called me from her doctor’s office: something was not quite right and our twins would need…
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If you’ve ever seen someone trying to count by saying, “Not one, not two, not three…not four…” then you know that there is a practice to avoid counting in a direct way even when we are counting the Jewish men in a room to see when there is a minyan. Some get around this by…
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A few weeks ago I attended the Shepherd Park Citizens’ Association potluck gathering. The event took place just up the road at the Washington Ethical Society and the room where we ate is the same meeting room where the Ethical Culture Society has their own gatherings. Over the stage, front and center, was the motto…
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If you ever attended a Pesach Seder at our home you would have heard my sister in law, a”h, ask how it is that we sing Dayeinu and declare that it would have been enough for us if, for example, God had only taken us out of Egypt but not made judgements upon the Egyptians,…
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Decades ago, one fateful afternoon, I went to the dentist. The dental hygienist, upon seeing my kipah, was excited to tell me that she and her Jewish boyfriend had just seen The Prince of Egypt in the theater and that it was a great movie that I should see too. She then shared that she…
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