Bereshit - Beginning Anew
11/11/2024 09:26:14 AM
Bereshit - Beginning Anew
I confess to having been at a bit of a loss as I thought about Simchat Torah, which we celebrated on Thursday night and Friday. I knew that the emotions of the October 7 attack being launched on Simchat Torah and Shabbat last year would be part of the day. Often on anniversaries, you relive some of the pain, loss, sadness, anger and...Read more...
Yizkor – My and Our Grief
10/30/2024 04:24:52 PM
Yizkor – My and Our Grief
This has been a hard year – between all the loss in the Middle East and personal loss – it has felt like too much at times. As many of you know, this is my first Yizkor since my mother died in July. I have led Yizkor for so many years here and this is my first time when I am an official mourner. I feel sad and...Read more...
Yom Kippur 5785 – Emerging from the Whale’s Belly
10/30/2024 04:23:45 PM
Yom Kippur 5785 – Emerging from the Whale’s Belly
I felt a connection with the prophet Jonah in a way I never have before this year. Jonah provides a window a window to my soul and experience in the past year – reminding me who I am and who I might be. As I teach about him, I think you too will find pieces of yourself. Jonah is us.
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Rosh Hashana 5785 –The Need for Peoplehood
10/30/2024 04:21:25 PM
Rosh Hashana 5785 –The Need for Peoplehood
This traumatic impact of this year is real and ongoing: war, loss, antisemitism, allies disappearing, deepening polarization, our children feeling unsafe. Our worldviews have been upended. There is so much stirring – yet one truth towers above everything. We are a people – Am Yisrael. Since October 7,...Read more...
Yizkor - The Time That Is Given Us
10/26/2024 07:52:08 PM
My family and I spent a few days at Lake Tahoe over Labor Day weekend. I intended to detach from the news for that short time, and so I did not see the headlines announcing that six hostages had been murdered. I learned via a text message from my husband, who had driven up separately from me. Hersh and the beautiful 6 - gone. I was stunned. I think we were all stunned. Up there in Tahoe, we sat and rewatched Rachel...Read more...
Kol Nidre - Forgiveness
10/16/2024 04:26:47 PM
Rosh Hashanah Day 2 - War Sirens
10/16/2024 04:24:31 PM
Re'eh - The Power of Hope
10/16/2024 04:19:56 PM
At the end of a big Jewish community event last fall - the Z3 conference - all of us community rabbis were invited up on the stage to lead the singing of Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem.
Hatikvah, as many of you know, means “the hope”. The song describes the two thousand year-old hope of the Jewish people, that someday we would return to our homeland.
עוד לא אבדה...Read more...
Shoftim – Write a Torah
09/26/2024 09:45:15 AM
Shoftim – Write a Torah
Charles Ramsey was the Chief of Police in Washington DC from 1998 – 2007. Listen to his words: “Policing is often referred to as a job or a profession. In reality, it is much more. Policing is a calling. It is a pledge to dedicate our professional lives to serving other people and protecting those things our citizens hold...Read more...
Ki Tavo – Love the Ger
09/26/2024 09:44:04 AM
Ki Tavo – Love the Ger
*Ger means stranger/foreigner
I have a distinct memory from when I was around nine or ten and would attend Yom Kippur services. We came to that pages-long prayer Al Chet, where we enumerated all the ways we missed the mark in the past...Read more...
Pinchas - The Broken Vav
07/30/2024 09:11:20 AM
Pinchas - The Broken Vav
Peace is fragile. It is difficult to achieve and maintain. Through a subtle detail – a broken vav - our Torah portion drives this point home.
Before we can get to the detail, we have to know the back story. At the end of last week’s portion, we learn that a plague had broken out because the Israelites...Read more...
Leah Ezray – Eulogy
07/23/2024 12:30:41 PM
I adored my mom. She was fun and full of life. She was kind. She was present. She was grateful for anything and everything someone did for her. She lived life with genuine love that lifted me, and everyone who knew her, up. She let me know that she admired and respected me. I am heartbroken.
There is a line in the Eshet Chayil...Read more...