Sermons
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This August the New York Times published a story on electronic productivity-monitoring of white-collar employees, many more of whom are now working remotely away from the watchful eye of their supervisors and colleagues. The article drew a lot of attention for the ways in which the article itself incorporated the very technologies about which it…
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A week or so ago I helped Akiva and Hillel complete a homework assignment for their 9th grade Talmud class. Their assignment was to prepare a selection from the commentary of Tosafot to the chapter of Talmud they are studying this year. The Tosafot commentaries were written by scholars in Northern France and Germany in…
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When my father came to America in 1949 on the RMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest ocean liner in the world, among his fellow passengers was Winston Churchill, (then leader of the opposition) on his way to a week of meetings in New York. Because my father was so young and so small he was able…
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There is a proverbial story, made popular by the Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer about a rabbi who was visited by a quarreling couple. The wife first shared her complaint about all the terrible things her husband had done to her. The rabbi listened solemnly and said, “you’re right.” But then the husband jumped in…
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One of the strangest moments of dissonance that exists in our prayer life occurs very frequently on Friday night when we sing along cheerfully, melodiously, in harmony to the words of Psalm 95: אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה אָקוּט בְּדוֹר וָאֹמַר עַם תֹּעֵי לֵבָב הֵם וְהֵם לֹא־יָדְעוּ דְרָכָי׃ יאאֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּעְתִּי בְאַפִּי אִם־יְבֹאוּן אֶל־מְנוּחָתִי׃ What do those words mean? Forty…
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When Moshe asked God to designate Moshe’s successor, whom did Moshe have in mind? וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־ה לֵאמֹר׃ יִפְקֹד ה אֱ-לֹהֵי הָרוּחֹת לְכׇל־בָּשָׂר אִישׁ עַל־הָעֵדָה׃ And Moshe said to God as follows: Let the LORD, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who shall go out before them and come…
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Last week, Sophie and I took a short trip to the border region between Wisconsin and Michigan. We went there because I wanted to visit a piece of protected forest called the Sylvania Wilderness which is one of the only remaining old-growth forests in the midwest. I spent many happy weeks of my childhood hiking…
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The best peach I ever ate was back in July of 1991. It was an absolutely perfect peach; I never expect to meet its equal. But even though there are exceptional meals, perfectly ripe fruit, exquisite experiences that we cherish forever, we also have a tendency, as human beings, to view the past with rose-colored…
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Think of a phone call that made a difference in your life. Reflect on what it feels like to be the subject of someone’s care and concern and love and how empowering and supportive that can be. Can it feel the same way if someone bumps into you on the street by accident? Sometimes it…
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Some books are able to convey the essential point of the book just in their title alone. An excellent example of that is Professor Leora Batnitzky’s book How Judaism Became a Religion. The premise of her book is that “religion” came to mean something very specific in 18th century Europe. In the emerging modern west,…
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Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 