Where Have All The Flowers Gone

“Where have all the flowers gone.” For a host of reasons, I hate loving this song: especially at this time of year. I look forward to loving this song, when it will no longer speak to me. This song is about the cycle of life and death. Our life cycles are a normal part of...
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Time to Move Forward

As much as I love the Passover seder, it’s in the few days immediately afterward that I can more easily imagine the chaos of the Exodus from Egypt. Coming back from being with my family, unpacking and wondering what happened to half the things I brought with me, being unable to find anything in the...
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T’shuvah, Hope and the Struggle for Justice

It’s hard to hope for peace these days. The ceasefire in Gaza holds but there is no political breakthrough; President Obama has just announced a new and complex military action against a brutal enemy in Iraq and Syria; Ukraine is bleeding, and anti-Semitism in Europe has turned ugly and violent. Here at home, the suburbs...
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Intimacy With God Requires Human Contact

Parshat Nitzavim, the first of this week’s double parshah, speaks powerfully to our fundamental human need for connection to each other and to Gd — and therefore to the isolation that is an anathema to it. The covenant of Torah that began with the distant and dramatic display of Gd’s power at Mount Sinai is...
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“Love Trumps Power”?

“Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit….” (Zechariah 4:6) Is that the way forward in 2017? Our rabbinic ancestors chose Zechariah’s important words as the prophetic message of Chanukah. In some ways, it’s an odd choice. In the Torah portion, Miketz, Joseph harnesses Pharaoh’s might and power to save the Egyptians from...
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The Miracle of Water

When we read parashat Beshalach, most of our attention falls on the big miracle, the parting of the Red Sea. The Israelites celebrate with timbrel and dance, singing God’s praises for redeeming them from slavery. Given that, thousands of years later, we still commemorate this moment liturgically twice a day, one would think that the Israelites...
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This Torah Has No Room For Hatred

Like all congregational rabbis, I frequently give eulogies for the deceased, and walk with their families to bury them. Jewish tradition prioritizes remembering the dead. It is a mitzvah gedolah—a great mitzvah—to give a eulogy that breaks the hearts of the listeners and highlights the praiseworthy deeds deceased, while simply forgetting his or her failings....
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The Binary Brothers (Parshat Toldot)

Commentary on Parshat Toldot (Genesis 25:19 – 28:9) This week’s Torah portion, Toldot, tells the story of twin brothers who were labeled from the moment they were born, and the consequences have reverberated throughout our history. Jacob, the heel-grabbing younger brother who tried to prevent his sibling from emerging from the womb first was the...
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Who Feels the Pain? (Parshat VaEra)

Commentary on Parshat Vaera (Exodus 6:2 – 9:35) Who deserves human rights? Even the Torah has its blind spots. The Torah portion VaEra describes an escalating cycle. As YHWH predicts, Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh and he refuses to free the Israelites. A plague strikes, and Pharaoh relents. The plague is removed by divine intervention,...
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