Divrei Torah/Torah Talks

Yom Kippur 5770

PDF: YKtalk5770.pdf

A few years ago, I was attending a retreat for rabbis sponsored by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. As an introductory exercise, we were sitting in a circle facing a partner, sharing answers to a variety of questions. The leader asked us: “If money were no concern, and if you had all the requisite skills and knowledge that you would need, what would you be, other than a...Read more...

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5769

PDF: ErevRHTalk5769-SeeingClearly.pdf

Tonight we usher in the aseret yamei teshuvah, the Ten Days of Teshuvah, from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur. “Teshuvah” means “return,” an image which I love. The notion here is that our challenge at this time of year is not to overcome our true nature, but rather to return to our true nature, to the yetzer tov, the tendency towards good,...Read more...

Kol Nidre 5769

In this moment, we are about to enter into our first period of silent prayer and reflection, the first of many Amidah prayers over the course of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is always a fragile time, a time to reconcile with the ephemeral nature of our lives. We sit with awareness of the twists and turns of life that we may not foresee. This Yom Kippur, the world around us seems a bit more fragile and perilous...Read more...

Rosh Hashanah I 5768

PDF: ErevRHTalk5768.pdf

We just chanted “B’sefer chayim”—“In the book of life, blessing, and peace, and sustenance may we be written and inscribed.” For nearly two thousand years, there has been an association between Rosh Hashanah and the metaphor of books. The first place that I am aware of this image appearing is in the Talmud, in the tractate Rosh Hashanah. There, Rabbi Yohanan, who...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5768

PDF:  YK5768Talk-ComingCloser.pdf

Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the great medieval philosopher (also known as Maimonides), taught:

“Teshuvah is great because it draws a person close to the Shechina…as the prophet Jeremiah states, ‘If you will turn/return (tashuv), Israel’ declares Adonai, ‘to Me you will return.’” Maimonides concludes, “Teshuvah brings close those...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5767

PDF: Telling Our Stories

In the haftarah that we read a little earlier, the prophet Isaiah rails against a whole assortment of injustices: the oppression of workers, violence, neglect of the poor and needy. Isaiah’s words are a call to awareness, to addressing the wrongs of a society that is failing its own members. But how do we become moved to action, today, in response to the critical issues that...Read more...

Rosh Hashanah I 5766

PDF: 5766-rh.pdf

I feel like I’m hearing a lot about “truth” these days. There seem to be a lot of people, both here in America and around the world, who have a very clear idea about what truth is. Whether it’s folks on the Christian right, or Muslim fundamentalists, or the Catholic hierarchy here in Massachusetts talking about gay marriage, the one thing that seems consistent is...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5766

PDF: 5766-yk.pdf

We gather during these Aseret Yamei Teshuvah, these ten days stretching from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, with a focus on renewal. We celebrated the birthday of the world last week, and now today we seek a similar kind of new beginning for ourselves. That is the promise of these days: that change is possible, that we can take new insight, new energy, new commitment into the new year....Read more...

Rosh Hashanah I 5765

PDF: 5765-rh.pdf

This month, we are celebrating 350 years of Jewish presence in what is now the United States of America. In September 1654, a small ship carrying 23 Jews from Brazil sailed into the port of New Amsterdam–present-day New York. These were Sephardic Jews, descendants of refugees from the Portuguese Inquisition, which had taken root in Portugal 40 years after the Jewish community was...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5765

PDF: 5765-yk.pdf

On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about the challenge of creating “Jewish houses” for ourselves to live in. I posed the question, what would it look like if the basic frame, the basic structures of our lives, were rooted in what Mordecai Kaplan called our “Jewish civilization”?

I also spoke about Judaism as at its core a transformative project. Our great “master story,”...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5764

PDF: 5764-yk.pdf

I want to engage with you with the text that Elaine has just read for us, the section of Isaiah that was chosen by the ancient rabbis to be read every year on Yom Kippur morning.

This portion of the Book of Isaiah was most likely written in the 6th century BCE, after the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish community to Babylonia. The...Read more...

Rosh Hashanah I 5764

PDF:  5764-rh.pdf

Where do we first hear about Rosh Hashanah? In the Torah, in the book of Leviticus, we read:

It then goes on to give instructions about...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5763

PDF: 5763-yk.pdf

I want to talk today with you about a topic that is difficult, in many ways, a topic that can create tension in families, divide communities, that we often want to avoid because it is so contentious. That topic is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So. Why do I want to tackle this issue today, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of our year?

There are at least two...Read more...

Rosh Hashanah I 5762

PDF: 5762-utaneh-tokef.pdf

It hasn’t been the easiest thing, to come up with words that match the enormity of what we have experienced this week. Sometimes it has felt that silence, or tears, or shouts of pain, are the only appropriate response. And I imagine many of us feel overwhelmed with words and images—from the TV, the radio, the newspaper.

The words I’d like to share with you...Read more...

Yom Kippur 5762

PDF: 5762-yom-kippur.pdf

Today’s haftarah, those powerful words from the prophet Isaiah, were a call and a challenge to a community that had fallen down on its obligations. To our ears Isaiah’s charge may sound radical, like a call for a new type of community or society. But in the context of the Bible, the prophet’s call was not for something new, but for a return to something old:...Read more...