Clergy Sermons

Recently I went to Mesa Verde National Park in Cortez, Colorado. Thousands of years ago the Ancestral Pueblo Native Americans lived in this area in iconic cliff dwellings. I learned that in nearly every cliff dwelling there is a Kiva, which was considered the cultural and religious center of the whole community. The Kiva is the place where the clan met to tell stories that were passed down from generation to generation in order to maintain...Read more...

Today on our Tikva Shabbat, we have gotten a small glimpse of what our tradition has to say about conflict resolution, respectful dialogue, and tolerance for multiple viewpoints.

The 30-million-shekel question is, how do we make it happen?

Is it easy in here to say, “We should listen with curiosity, or accept multiple points of view.” But what happens in the real world, when we are sitting across from someone who believes...Read more...

As I sat down to write my sermon this week, my soul was troubled, and I was searching for comfort. And for all that Judaism brings comfort in extraordinary ways, the burdens of our world felt too heavy. Being from Sacramento and witnessing senseless mass killings of streets so familiar to me was painful. The litany of prayers and thoughts for families of victims and those wounded, which we have offered far too many times in recent months,...Read more...

This Shabbat is the sermon campaign for Shalom Bayit.  Shalom Bayit literally means “peace at home”, and it’s the name of the Bay Area’s center for domestic violence prevention within the Jewish community. Each year, Shalom Bayit asks rabbis throughout the Bay Area to address domestic violence, if possible all on a single Shabbat.  It’s not always possible to do it on the date requested –  the truth, is we...Read more...

Our endeavor to make CBJ a more inclusive community has been, and continues to be, an ongoing process. From communal study, days of learning, and conferences, to undergoing long term training, we’ve engaged in discussions and re-envisioned what it means to be a community of love, learning, engagement, and inclusion. You can see signs of this endeavor throughout our community and facility in many ways, attempting to bring a greater sense of...Read more...

My dear friend Rabbi Barry Katz is with his family this weekend for the Bar Mitzvah of his nephew. He had access to and put on the tefillin of his great grandfather who came from the shtetl of Geysin, Ukraine, south of Kyev. Putting on the tefillin connected him with the family story. His family never talked about why they left, but clearly there was antisemitism and things were not good. He wrote that he thought about the Ukrainian people...Read more...