Judaism for the Thinking Person

The Biblical Meaning of "Holiness" - That Isn't Yours!

Mon, 11 May 2026 18:39:10 -0400

I have watched ridiculous ways of explaining why things are right and wrong to small kids --which indicates that most adults have no clue themselves. I've watch the "rational consequences" approach, giving kids long multiple-choice decisions while teasing out each's consequences --while kids stare blankly. I have watched the Golden Role approach -- really? How about the new trend of Empathy and Restorative Justice? It sounds wonderful, except that it backfires: most kids aren't naturally empathetic, and restorative justice usually just revictimizes the victim. How about we go to the core meaning of "holy" in the Holiness Code of Leviticus: "That doesn't exist for your benefit." (That toy wasn't yours to consider playing with! That yard wasn't yours to go in! That turn wasn't yours to take! etc.)

DO NOT Forget on Passover! In Praise of Biur Chametz

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:50:56 -0400

This year's traditional teaching on a Law of Passover (per the tradition of Shabbat Hagadol). For a download of the text I'm referring to: https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/jewish-law/holidays/pesah/b-dikat-hameitz.pdf

Israel and Iran: Malachi, Xerses, and Liza Minnelli

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:05:00 -0400

The Iran War began at Purim (about Persia, now Iran) and now we're at Passover with Persia yet again as we are required to read Malachi. The Bible actually ends in the Persian period with the triumvirate of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi. I share some history, some Bible, and some modern absurd framing that exemplifies the idiotic antisemitism rampant in our popular media as this war rages on.

Why Jurgen Habermas Died Between Exodus and Leviticus

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 09:26:10 -0400

There is a loss that takes place between the end of Exodus, with the people donating materials and building the tabernacle in small groups excitedly, and the beginning of Leviticus with the routinization of altar offerings and a professional class to facilitate essential social functions. This loss is precisely the one the great thinkers Max Weber and Jurgen Habermas described in their most important works. It's not accident Habermas died with the scroll rolled to the space in between the two Torah books.

The Visual Language of Norms in Judaism -- And We are the Poorer for Losing It

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:43:29 -0400

This is a Drash on Parashat Tetzaveh, an Exodus portion about the priestly clothing that usually elicits shallow reflections on clothes. Instead, I try to bring to life the amazing living language of garments in Jewish history -- a language of norms embedded in visual cues. It's a language modern culture has thrown away, and the values that go with it, and we are the poorer for it.

Forced Labor was Used to Build the First Temple?

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 09:51:34 -0500

For parashat Terumah, the Rabbis pair a Torah reading about Terumah, donation from the heart, with the account of Solomon's building of the first Temple, which was done using "mas," forced labor, the customary tax of the time. But wasn't that what was forced on the Israelites in Egypt, and to which much of the Torah is a direct response? Shouldn't we be just a little bit uncomfortable?

10 Commandments or 10 Speakings? Speech as the Center of Our Worship

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:12:29 -0500

The 2nd Commandment says not to make a chiseled thing part of our worship, yet the 10 Commandments actually are a chiseled thing! In this podcast, I show how the Jewish tradition the notion that it's okay in this instance because we make divine speech --words chiseled on these chiseled stones!-- the center of our worship practice. This changes everything: holiness comes through the holiness of speech, both divine in creating worlds and in creating instructions for how to live, and through our own speech. Instead of an image or an idol, we have speech. I also cover how the 10 Statements (Torah) became the 10 Commandments (Christianity) and so the Rabbis renamed them the 10 Speakings.

Seeing ICE Through Scripture (from local rally)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:49:12 -0500

My remarks from a local rally.

Jacob's Blessings and Aging Out of People Pleasing

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 15:54:57 -0500

Drawing on the book "(Un)kind: How 'Be Kind' Entrenches Sexism" by Victoria Smith and Ellen Scherr's essay "The Neuroscience of Why You Suddenly Can’t Pretend Anymore," I examine Jacob's deathbed blessings to his sons, which are impartial statements of fact with neither personal commentary nor people-pleasing softening. I see in my own life the draw of middle age to convey factual statements without personal judgment, but the societal messages that everything has to be couched in uplifting, taking-care-of-others'-feelings language or you're a bad person or a bad supervisor.

Agriculture, Economic Collapse, and the Joseph Story

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:49:19 -0500

At the end of Genesis, Joseph centralizes the agricultural system of Egypt, saving the country from collapse due to upcoming years of bad crops (e.g. due to drought), but turning farmers into serfs upon their own land in the process. The Rabbis debate whether Joseph did a good thing or a bad thing to the people. I take two stories from the headlines to take each side of this debate: first, the collapse of American farms due to corporate monopolies (turning American farmers into serfs on their own land), and second, the upcoming collapse of great world cities like Tehran if they refuse to centralize power and exercise eminent domain to enforce collective action.

The AI Gods Taking Away our Souls and Our Community

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:43:28 -0500

My Kol Nidrei 2025 Sermon on how our phones are amplifying the centrifugal force of the pull of our individual lives, sacrificing the centripetal force of community, by holding out a fake community, a false version of ourselves (the shadow masquerading as the soul), and building Temples for us to worship the A.I. gods.

Parashat Toldot: Is Imposter Syndrome a Fault or a Gift from God?

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 14:47:46 -0500

This is a revision of a podcast I released several years ago. It focuses on Isaac as the patriarch of Imposter Syndrome. In my own life, I've come to make peace with my own Imposter Syndrome, seeing the anxiety I must live with as a gift that leads me not to shame, but to service. It has made me appreciate Isaac enormously.

What Can the Rabbinic Debate about Noah Teach Us About Equity?

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 11:09:55 -0400

I relate the debate from Bereishit Rabbah to This American Life episode 550.

Maimonides' Laws of War & Talking About Gaza

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 20:27:08 -0400

Most of us have been avoiding the painful conversations with friends and family over Gaza. Why? It seems like we have no common frame of reference, and so it hardly seems worth it. In this Rosh Hashanah sermon, I do something a little bizarre: I use Judaism's main halakhic code about war -- Maimonides' codification of all the Torah's statements on war-- to illuminate the war we are at with ourselves. My hope is that it opens us all up a little to each other.

Getting "Miracles" Right in Judaism and in Our Lives (Yom Kippur Sermon 2025)

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 18:19:14 -0400

Miracle may be the most misunderstood concept in Judaism. While some Jewish sects officially (like Chabad), and most Jews unofficially, construe "miracles" as supernatural interventions in the nature, as in Christianity, the Jewish tradition tends to understand the word "miracle" (in Biblical Hebrew: "nes") in a far more subtle way. In this sermon, I explain the true meaning of "nes" as "sign" or "that which is risen above the ordinary" to help us deepen our sense of God's presence in our everyday lives, and change our concept of God from a Being within reality to the Being that is Reality.

Parashat Behaalotkhah: Grievance and Getting the Leaders We Deserve

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 17:36:45 -0400

In this long section of the Torah, where Miriam and Aaron are disciplined by God for challenging Moses, where Moses tries yet again to resign his leadership, where the 70 Elders to help Moshe go ahead and prophesy, but strangely nothing seems to come from it, I am struck by how much the parashah speaks to our time, where the strangest of leaders are getting elected. We learn from Torah that leadership is not just about being prophetic or charismatic or elected, leadership is relational.

Pinchas and Superman as our Mirror

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 10:52:47 -0400

Rabbi Irwin Kula reminds us that when we engage deeply with Torah, it can serve "as our mirror" which illuminates our inner complexities, strivings, horizon of significance, so we can better understand ourselves, others, and the world. In this presentation, I note how the Biblical story of Pinchas (who gets his own name on a parashah!) is a little different than most Biblical narratives in that most generate debates that quote textual evidence, but Pinchas usually just has the binary of "you either read it one way or the other." In that, it is our mirror in a more immediate way than usual. I compare the Rabbinic view and legend of Pinchas as the Biblical "Superman" with the recent James Gunn movie, quoting from, among other places, the excellent essay by Will Rahn.

Abraham Joshua Heschel Second Class: Ethics vs Holiness

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 17:16:31 -0400

We have grown accustomed to seeing Ethics and Holiness as virtually the same thing. I show that in order to properly understand Heschel's interlocking concepts of Blessing (berakhah), Faith (emunah), Awe (yirah), and Commandedness (Mitzvah), one needs to grasp that Ethics and Holiness are VERY different. This podcast has been edited to remove the Q&A, which sometimes found the material uncomfortable to their sensibilities.

Abraham Joshua Heschel First Class: Gratitude, Awe, and Actually Connecting to God

Fri, 23 May 2025 17:53:08 -0400

The vast majority of work on Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is academic: summaries, clarification, footnotes and so on. In this series of classes, I'm here to show you how to live Heschel's religious philosophy, not understand it. In this first lecture, I show how one begins this process by first gathering three philosophies: 1) Schleiermacher, 2) Pragmatism, and 3) Phenomenology. With these basics, one is ready to identify what connecting to God looks like, whether you've ever done it yourself, and how it creates and informs Judaism.

Passover as the Secret High Holidays: Making Your Rosh Hashanah Resolutions Real Halfway Through the Journey

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 10:07:19 -0400

There are two New Years on the Jewish calendar (in addition to the new years for trees and for flocks): Rosh Hashanah and First of Nissan (announced on Shabbat HaChodesh). The deep spiritual connection between the two is emphasized by reading the haftarah from Ezekiel, who sees the journey from the 1st of Nissan to Pesach as an equal mirror of the journey from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, and for whom Pesach is the real Yom Kippur. There is a deep and very practical message here: most of our Rosh Hashanah new years' resolutions may fall apart following Sukkot, but the best time to really enact those resolutions in a sustainable way is to use Pesach as the renewal of putting those resolutions into practice. Especially with the change and limitation on diet, the open discussion of what it means to serve God and your own soul during the Seder, THIS is the time to restart doing those resolutions. We're only halfway through the year: you've got six months of leaning into the homestretch, pulled by the gravity of the upcoming holidays. What are your new years' resolutions? How can you implement them during Pesach?

The Mishkan, Indigenous Wisdom, and the Right to Repair

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 10:10:29 -0400

We often fail to appreciate the virtues of the Shepherd period of Judaism, which preceded the Israelite period. In this dvar Torah, I focus on the virtues of sustainability and repairability of the portable sanctuary (Mishkan) over the permanent version (Temple), and I apply it to legislation before state congresses today.

A People of the Book and a Generation That Has Never Read One

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 13:31:15 -0500

If you want to understand the crisis in education, look no further than Natalie Wexler's "The Knowledge Gap," one of the most important books of the past ten years. Is reading a skill you apply to any text, like stretching a muscle, or playing a video game, or is it, as our tradition defines it, something entirely different, something based on knowledge of the world, of life, and of relating to a larger story?

The Tower of Babel and the Problem of Identity-Based "Truths"

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 12:48:55 -0500

The plain sense of the brief Tower of Babel story is that dividing people up by their own languages is a curse that prevents cooperation (even if the Rabbis read the story differently). Using Coleman Hughes's essay on the Civil Rights hero Bayard Rustin, I wonder if the curse of our times is the identiy-based division of truths: is this modern paradigm a blessing of diversity or a curse for our much needed cooperation in solving our collective problems?

Misunderstanding Consent, Property and Patriarchy in Jewish Wedding Ceremonies

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 09:59:27 -0500

Using the text of Genesis chapter 24, Talmud Bavli Ketubot 82b, and the Conservative Movement responsum by Rabbi Pamela Barmash, I try to correct the pervasive misunderstings around the Jewish wedding ceremonies: Does arranged marriage (historically and today) exclude female consent? Is the Jewish wedding ceremony one of male acquisition of a female? Is the ketubah a wedding document or a prenuptial agreement that protects the bride and her property?

Moving Beyond the Progressive Lens to True Religion (Yom Kippur 2024)

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 18:46:19 -0400

How do the ideals of progressivism become the idols of antisemitism? As a rabbi in one of the most progressive cities in America, I try to understand this phenomenon through scapegoat theory and through my own heartbreaking experiences. So what do we tell our college students? How do we heal instead of hurt? How do we get to the Thou? (Sermon, Yom Kippur 2024/5785)

We're All Looking for Empathy after October 7th, Including Me! (Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2024)

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 11:45:18 -0400

As a Conservative rabbi in one of the most progressive cities in America, it's been an incredibly painful year of feeling unable to ask for empathy from my own fellow Jews, as I see this year's events as Good vs Evil, and so many of my congregants want me to be condemning Israel while declaring moral equivalencies. And I know they, too, need from me what I cannot give them: validation for their perspective. This sermon is my way of coming to terms with all of it.

Writing G-d and the Danger of Idolatry

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 15:29:27 -0400

This dvar Torah uses the amazing article by Rabbi David Golinkin on the history of the halakhah and the practice. It can be found at: https://schechter.edu/must-gods-name-be-written-in-english-as-g-d/

Did a Biblical Outlaw Understand the Arab-Israel Conflict Better than Today's Students?

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 09:03:00 -0400

It is commonplace to hear today's Israel-Arab Conflict portrayed as an example of Settler-Colonial European Jews settling in the nation-state of indigenous-dwelling Palestinians. This is a modern invention and is not how the conflict was understood by local Arabs a hundred years ago, who did so in rational terms that match the Biblical arguments between the Israelites (Gideonites) and local Ammonites in Judges chapters 10 and 11. Using the recent scholarly work of Jonathan Marc Gribetz as well as Alex Stein's Love of the Land substack, I show how the ancient outlaw leader Yiftach understood today's situation better than student demonstrators, colonial marxist professors, and Western Hamas apologists.

The Biblical Battle of the AI Priesthood Lineage

Tue, 21 May 2024 12:41:09 -0400

Amalekites, Gaza and the End of Megillat Esther on Purim

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 14:23:40 -0400

As Purim became a holiday of tremendous festivities and lightheartedness, the Rabbis knew that the end of the Megillah in Chapter 9 has a dubious quality, that of a massacre on Haman's people. Is this a happy ending, a desirable ending, that of massacre, that of Jews finally (and really for its time, only possible in the Jewish imagination but not in practice) having power? So the Rabbis created a requirement that on the Shabbat morning before Purim, one must read about the Amalekites. In this podcast, I present traditional commentary and observations given the context of the fighting in Gaza.

The 19th Century Reform Rabbi Who Changed Physics

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 22:05:29 -0500

The most influential rabbi you've never heard of? Based on an episode of the RadioLab podcast ("Relative Genius") and a biography in the Jewish Encyclopedia -- https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12611-rebenstein-aaron -- I tell you about the extraordinary Rabbi Aaron David Bernstein who likely accomplished more in his lifetime by himself than your average Ivy League university!

The Israelites Left Egypt Armed: Gender & Chauvinism Preceding October 7

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:44:59 -0500

In the second verse of Parashat Beshalach (the flight from Egypt and the crossing of the Sea of Reeds), the Torah states that the Israelites fled fully armed. I explore the traditional commentaries on why, and connect this to the haftarah (story of Deborah and Yael) and to the intelligence failures in Israel caused by male chauvinism.

Who Gets to Be a Spokesperson for Israel? The Soft of Heart and Slow of Speech

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 16:38:03 -0500

The focus of the American and international conversation about the Hamas attack and its aftermath has been "Ceasefire or No Ceasefire" by which people mean (since there was a ceasefire prior to Hamas's breaking it) whether Israel should cease its counter offensive due to civilian casualties. Who gets to be a spokesperson for Israel at this time in our communities and in the world? Interestingly, the Torah portions of Vaera and Bo --where we are when the war stands at 100 days-- raises the classic ethical question: Why did God prosecute a full 10 plagues upon the Egyptian population when it seemed like Pharoah might yield earlier? Why does God intervene --it seems-- in the hardening of Pharoah's heart so that the full span of destruction continues? In this Dvar Torah, I note the context of this Torah discussion. This is the first time Am Yisrael --the nation of Israel-- ever has a spokesperson! That phrase, that this kinship-related tribe of Hebrews, or Bnei Yisrael, are actually a Nation, is spoken first in the Bible by Pharaoh. And God appoints Moshe as the spokesperson, and Moshe turns it down, so Aaron becomes a spokesperson. Why turn it down? Who today gets to speak for the nation when the antisemite demands a response? I note two important textual clues. First, Moshe is called by God to be a spokesperson for the "Sh'fatim Gedolom" --the "Great Judgments upon Egypt" (the plagues)-- and replies that his "S'fatayim" (lips) aren't up to it. (Though one is tav and the other tet, the words look strikingly alike in the Torah!) Midrashically, the trouble is not a speech impediment, it is an impediment to explaining the plagues to the hostile audience! When God doesn't accept that excuse, Moshe says he has "hardness of mouth" and "hardness of tongue/speech" -- the same word "hardness" that describes Pharaoh's heart! This surely tells us a lot of the deep meaning connecting the two.

Tikkun Olam and Redeeming the Hostages

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 17:53:00 -0500

As a Dvar Torah for Vayigash (Joseph's revealing himself to his brothers following Judah's speech), I explore the mitzvah of redeeming our captives and the limitations on the law "for the sake of Tikkun Olam."

The conversation among American Jews about Gaza centers around "Ceasefire or No Ceasefire? What kind of Jew am I if I don't support stopping the bombing?" while the conversation in Israel is "Exchange terrorists for hostages? What kind of Jew am I if I don't bring my sister/brother home at any cost to an Israel bereaved beyond measure?" In an amazing synchronicity with the Torah reading, the entire drama of all the parashiyot of the Joseph saga lead up to whether Judah will say for his brother Benjamin what he wouldn't say for Joseph, that he will do anything rather than fail to bring his brother home to his bereft father, an Israel who cannot bear further trauma. What kind of Judah/Jew am I if I don't bring my brother home to my heartbroken Israel? And there is Israel (Jacob), saying he will enter Sheol (the underworld) if he is forced to endure another son never coming home.

The redemption of Jewish captives is one of the hightest mitzvot in Judaism. Why? And why does the Talmud and Jewish Legal codes say that one only refrains from doing so for the sake of Tikkun Olam?

Halakhah and Aggadah: The Ten Stories We Tell PART TWO

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:03:00 -0500

PART TWO of this Yom Kippur 2023 sermon, in which I share the result of my personal and rabbi experiences of the last 15 years: that the longer we live, the shorter our eulogy becomes; that life (like scripture) is a combination of halakhah (direct description of human behavior) and aggadah (our stories in which God is an invisible character); that the main point of Yom Kippur is to learn how to retell our stories so that the way God has been communicating to us through our experiences becomes center stage, with the intimation explicit, the aspiration articulated, the perpective holy, so we live wearing the garments of holiness, with the perspective of shrouds and Unetaneh Tokef, as God writes the books of Avinu Malkeinu from the way we are telling our stories.

Halakhah and Aggadah: The Ten Stories We Tell PART ONE

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 12:14:01 -0500

In this Yom Kippur 2023 sermon, I share the result of my personal and rabbi experiences of the last 15 years: that the longer we live, the shorter our eulogy becomes; that life (like scripture) is a combination of halakhah (direct description of action) and aggadah (our stories in which God is an invisible character); that the main point of Yom Kippur is to learn how to retell our stories so that the way God has been communicating to us through our experiences becomes center stage, the intimations explicit, the aspirations articulated, the perpective holy, so we live wearing the garments of holiness, with the perspective of shrouds and Unetaneh Tokef, as God writes the books of Avinu Malkeinu from the way we are telling our stories.

Is There a Fear of God In This Place? Our Different Experiences of the Israel Gaza Conflict

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 12:04:28 -0500

Using the stories of Avraham, Sarah, and Hagar in Vayera, I voice what it's like to have utterly different experiences of the Gaza conflict with our coworkers, friends, and family members, some of whom seem to embody Dara Horn's prophecy that the world loves to pity the dead Jews of the past while finding the living Jews of today an inconvenience, an Other, and deserving of sanctimonious antisemitism.

The Commandment of Shevut: How Do We Handle its Inherent Subjectivity?

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:33:53 -0400

In Deuteronomy, we are commanded to keep Shabbat as restfulness. Many are unaware that this does not just involve practicing the Shabbat observances and restrictions --Biblical and Rabbinic-- but the highly unusual special-to-itself halakhic category of "Shevut," usually translated as proactively keeping "the spirit of Shabbat." The category of observing "the spirit of Shabbat" is inherently subjective, and it can vary from person to person. For one person, reading a newspaper on Shabbat is a violation of the spirit of Shabbat, while for another it enhances the spirit of Shabbat. Going someplace for Shabbat dinner or lunch might enhance the spirit for one, but for another take away from the Shabbat spirit of the sanctuary of home. The issue has come to the fore with the electric car. Since an EV has no fire within in, and electricity meets none of the halakhic prohibitions, its use on Shabbat largely comes down the category of shevut. This has produces two approved Responsa of the Conservative Movement, which are largely hostile to one another. In one, anybody considering the use of an EV on Shabbat should be considered in violation of the law, and shevut should not be considered subjective, but actually somehow defined by a small group of rabbinic authorities others in perpetuity! (It's like saying, How dare you read your psychology textbook on Shabbat! That's homework! Even though you are allowed to read on Shabbat and you love psychology.) The other group decries this attempt to take over and monopolize our one subjective category. I explore the issues.

The Kol Nidrei Ritual: Stepping into Your Future Self

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 12:24:59 -0400

Drawing on the traditional meaning of the Kol Nidrei --"All Vows"-- prayer, plus the Mishnah and Talmudic tractates on the Nidrei (Nedarim: Vows), plus the philosophy of Ritual Drama and the recent psychological studies about Future Selves, Rabbi Caine constructs a vision of what the Yom Kippur experience is supposed to be, a drama of our envisioning our future selves and playing those parts through Tefillah, Tsedakah and Teshuvah that connect to the Nidrei, our New Year's Resolutions.

Hineni Resolutions: I’m Ready but Are They?

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 16:07:39 -0400

My Second Day 5784/2023 Rosh Hashanah Sermon explores the New Year's resolution ("neder" as in "Kol Nidrei") in Biblical, Talmudic, and Contemporary Jewish spirituality. What is the one resolution in your life that is "If not now, when?" and what can the Talmud tell us about how to be successful at it?

The Genders Within God, and Within Ourselves!

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 09:16:45 -0400

My Rosh Hashanah 5784/2023 (first day) sermon examines the understanding of God's image as multiple genders in Jewish theology, mysticism, and Rabbinic midrash. What are the implications for transgender, nonbinary, and queer identifications? And equally, what are the implications for the self-understandings of everyday cisgender folk? Using the work of Joy Ladin, Charlotte Fonrobert, and Elliot Wolfson, in addition to classical and mystical Rabbinic sources, Rabbi Caine lays out the urgency of radical inclusion both with each other and with ourselves.

The Three Covenants: God Cares About God’s Brand. Do You?

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:58:16 -0400

As we begin the journey to High Holidays, I look at Matot the end of the Book of Numbers, where God is fastidiously concerned that we get right our relationship with the God of Judaism and, even deeper, the true God of the Universe. When these fall short, we are asked through the Biblical spirituality of vows, do we even care about our own word and how we show up in this world? This is a teaching for approaching the journey of weeks to the High Holidays.

Is the Book of Numbers about Remote Work?

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 17:07:00 -0400

Parashat Beha'alotkha begins with a memo to all the Israelites that doubles down on the top down hierarchy of Aharon and Moshe at the top, and then it continues with a series of amplified grumblings, complaints, and a continuation of the deterioration of the communal project and institution --now one year in-- that Exodus and Leviticus championed. The crux is that the top down structure operates through directives, orders, and job descriptions, and with each person now operating out of their tent-and-family --unlike before when slavery, Sinai, and mishkan construction were in person collective activities. It is an apropos description of the change from in-person to remote-work that we have experienced in the last four years, and the insoluble fractures it is causing are not only not resolved, but continue to tear apart the fabric of collective identity for the next several parashiyot in Numbers. How fitting we are reading this when the top tech companies, who created and sustain remote work, claim they can no longer function operating that way themselves.

Be Someone Else: Victor Turner and the Subversiveness of Ritual Performance

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 16:38:00 -0400

The longest parashah of the Torah's is Numbers' Naso, which begins with the theme of the tabernacle of roving ritual performance, like a traveling theater group, and then describes four ritual dramas that take publicly: the financial penitent, the jealous husband, the addict, and the arrogant prince. What do these have in common? Rather than seeing ritual function to impose comformity and social roles, I examine this through the theory of Victor Turner, who posited that rituals actually subvert conventional roles, and in a theatrical way, use fixed theater scrips and actions to subvert them, and you.

”Make Yourself a Wilderness” To Receive Torah

Thu, 25 May 2023 16:20:12 -0400

The Rabbis are understandably preoccupied with why the Torah was given bemidbar Sinai, in the wilderness of Sinai, rather than in the Land of Israel. Entire commentary collections are devoted to this one profound fact. In fact, the fourth book of the Bible, Bemidbar, even means "In the wilderness" and often occurs just before the holiday of Shavuot, where we collectively re-experience the gift of Torah happening in the wilderness. A teaching developed that the meaning of the Torah being "a gift from the wilderness" means that in order to receive Torah and wisdom in your life you need to "make yourself a wilderness," meaning that you make yourself a holy receptive vessel through becoming a midbar, a wildnerness. I teach some traditional teachings of practicing that in your own life.

Jubilee and the Passing on of Generational Wealth

Fri, 19 May 2023 18:31:11 -0400

In this teaching, I note how there are two sorts of social legislation that emerge out of the Holiness Code of Leviticus (as well as other places): the kind that is aspirational --invitations to become a holy people through holiness of giving, holiness of speech, holiness of conduct, holiness of caring-- and the kind that is deeply uncomfortable structural change -- i.e. so aspirational that you really want to just leave it "in heaven" as an unreachable ideal. An excellent example of the latter is the Jubilee Year, or Jubilee Reset, when not only does the Land receive extra ecological dispensation (terrifying for an agrarian culture), and not only are most debts forgiven (also terrifying to the economic system), but the Biblical basis of capital, the Land itself, is returned to an original apportionment. I compare the Jubilee Reset of capital once every 50 years to the Estate Tax, a way to prevent generational wealth from accumulating so far that the society cannot overcome the class divisions it creates of structural poor and structural privilege. In America, the Estate Tax is easy skirted with comically massive loopholes, while the generationally wealthy claim through propaganda that it should be eliminated because it is somehow targeted at farms, rather than the real problem of generational inherited wealth. Leviticus ends warning of societal collapse if we leave the Jubilee as an ideal rather than practical policy. What would society look like if we actually had a law that one cannot leave more than 50 million dollars to each child?

Two Forms of Action: Embodying the Kabbalistic Forces of Netzach and Hod

Mon, 08 May 2023 19:21:02 -0400

In honor of Lag B'Omer, I succinctly recount the Jewish mystical practice of embodying God's attributes during the period of Counting the Omer. Specifically, in the transition to the week of Lag B'Omer, we transition from practicing in our lives the form of leadership that involves pushing people, and yourself, to get through tasks, the kind of action in which you feel you're carrying people to the finish line so the team gets there, to a different mode of leadership from God's attributes, the leader who says little at the team meeting, and then when they need to, utters just a few humble words (like "Isn't who we are really about X?") that change everything.

Netzach (pushing through) and Hod (winning by stepping aside, like in martial arts) interplay.

Torah In a Minute: What’s the Big Deal About the Lunar Calendar?

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 15:52:13 -0400

Hope you're not having an Ecclesiastes month....

The Golden Calf and the Present Government in Israel

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 17:48:30 -0400

Drawing on many articles, from the New Republic to Thomas Friedman, I use Nachmanides' commentary on a verse from the Golden Calf account, the verse that recounts Moshe's reaction to witnessing the events unfolding, with unflinching criticism of Aaron's (supposed) leadership, and using a rare Hebrew word to describe the scene, that sounds like the Nation is becoming Pharaoh. How apt.

Text of some of the sermon is available here.

Jewish Law, Head Covering, and Knowing Before Whom You Stand

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 13:52:25 -0500

Using Rabbi Jane Kanarek's 2019 CJLS (Conservative Movement) halakhic responsum, I explain the complex development of Jewish head covering for both men and for women. Though my conclusions from the sources are a bit different from Rabbi Kanarek's --who does not address issues of relative cultural gender standards-- I, like her, agree that the vast majority of Jews are uneducated to the halakhah of head coverings in awareness of God's presence and in representing the community before God -- a basis that is essentially independent of the familiar domains of female gender modesty and male Jewish identity. Interestingly, today there is a movement of Jewish women under 50 to wear Jewish scarves and headbands, apparently in recovery of Jewish gender price and identity, but I believe many who do so are unaware of the complex roots that separate principles of hair covering and head covering.

God the Stutterer, God the Reluctant

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 09:51:21 -0500

I've always wondered why we repeatedly pray to God to be willing to grant us Shabbat, etc. What does it mean to be willing, or to be capable of exercising one's will? Free will and the exercise of will always comes up when trying to understand Pharoah's will and heart-hardening in Shemot, and so I use sources there to answer the question. The conclusion touches on how our relationship to God is different from our relationship to Torah. God, like Moshe, may not always be speaking or willing, but the Torah always is.

The Unalloyed Joy of Grandparenting

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 12:42:44 -0500

There are virtually no references to grandparenting in the Torah, until, by sharp contrast, we are told in Genesis 50:23 that Joseph got not only to grandparent but great-grandparent as well. I reflect upon this startling exception using two articles from the New York Times, including a recent one that describes the recent increase of adult children in their 20's becoming roommates with their grandparents.

Oppenheimer: The 20th Century ”Joseph”

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 17:13:39 -0500

Using the interpretations of the Rabbis (including Nachmanides and Sefer HaYashar) to understand Joseph's assimilation (in name, dress, etc.), I compare him to the American hero very recently in the news!

Achieving our Dreams while Living with Anxiety

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 17:05:45 -0500

Yaakov's famous wrestling scene and renaming as Yisrael --one who wrestles with God and prevails-- is often understood as Yisrael wrestling with God as his opponent. The Rabbis point out how problematic this is, since the opponent is listed as a "man," not as God. Therefore some of the Rabbis see it this way: the wrestling opponent looks identical to Esav, being his guardian angel (Rashi) or his projection, and wrestling "with God" (im elohim) means wrestling with God as a supportive ally. Yaakov clearly is the Patriarch of Anxiety, and in this climax, we see a powerful message: one does not vanquish anxiety, but rather "one who prevails" is one who does what they love (say, acting, healing, teaching, parenting, etc.) while experiencing panic and anxiety at the same time. This is the powerful message which is both true according to science and according to Torah.

Eco-Burial and Jewish Law

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 09:02:33 -0500

Is it right to use arable land --often very expensive in populated areas -- for graves, then pollute the environment by keeping them "dignified" through maintenance and pesticides, with the hollow promise of "perpetual care," and say this is all required by Jewish Law, when Jewish Law itself is the source of the requirement for eco-decomposition and of prohibitions against costly burial? I explicate the sources using the Conservative Movement's oficial responsum, "Alternative Kevura Methods" by Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, which can be found at bit.ly/3tMa4RG

Listening Like It’s Shivah

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 12:37:11 -0500

In this ten minute teaching I used to begin the 10 Days of Awe, I connect several teachings. The first is the Rabbinic teaching that following a calamity upon a village, one should try to give the luxury rations to those who are used to luxury because being unaccostomed to hardship, their anguish might be even greater than others' though we are tempted to believe the opposite. The second is that during Yom Kippur, we approach ourselves and our relationships in a state of aninut, of affliction -- the same word used when one has suffered calamity, and the same word used when one is burying a loved one and then heading into the week of shivah grieving. The third is that it is forbidden to say, "How are you?" to someone who has just experienced aninut, and instead one must practice a special form of active listening. Following two years of calamitous pandemic, where many of us put on brave faces because we are scared to share our emotions due to our perceived privilege or we may not have suffered as much as others, we must acknowledge that our pain is nonetheless real, very real, and that the directives of actively telling our stories and actively listening are the imperative way forward.

The Spiral of Progress/History

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 16:07:32 -0400

Is the Jewish concept of history that of linear progress, or that of Ecclesiastes' cyclical vanity? This teaching was delivered during a 12-Step friendly Serenity Shabbat.

Learning from 12 Step: The ”El Anon” Theology of the Exile Prophets

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 11:17:53 -0400

The theology of the haftarot of the exile prophets like Deutero-Isaiah is hard for most people to relate to: "You are in exile, your life is full of tragedy, and I love you, I remember you as you were before, but I won't be getting you out of the situation you got yourself in, and which I warned you repeatedly about." This is the kind of "unloving" God that Christian theologians for millenia have accused Jews of having. Yet do those in Al-Anon understand it in a way they can teach us?

Those in 12 Step Recovery are Our Teachers (Rosh Hashanah Sermon 2022)

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 14:24:12 -0400

For too long, Jews have associated the Recovery movement with Christianity, and we have seen those in recovery, or with addictions, as outsiders to Torah. This is far from reality. The main example of vows-of-change --the essence of High Holidays-- in the Torah itself is the vow to abstain from alcohol and other intoxicants, involving emulating priestly service and separating for a period from one's family and social triggers. The very process of High Holiday teshuvah is recognizing our wrong behavior, feeling bad about it, and then releasing that guilt feeling through doing a cheshbon nefesh --an accounting-- of exactly how we have harmed others and ourselves, then making amends, then embracing a different path, and then serving God and others. This is the teaching of 12 step. (Jewishly, the teshuvah steps are enumerated sometimes as 4, sometimes as 6, and sometimes as more steps, but they essentially mirror the 12 steps of recovery.) Whether the 12 Step Movement has roots in Christian founders is irrelevant: it embodies the sacred teachings of High Holidays. This sermon is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Twerski z"l, who died in 2021 from complications from COVID.

Chatter and Our Relationship with God through Our Relationship with Our Inner Voice

Sun, 09 Oct 2022 19:03:11 -0400

My Yom Kippur sermon in 2022. Using Ethan Kross's book Chatter along with Jewish sources and my own observations about life, I challenge us to form our relationship to God through our relationship with our inner voice, which these days tends to be taken over by CHATTER, the stress brought on by the takeover of our inner God voice through the Satan voice. It's time we challenge it head on.

Moses the Mother in Transition (Ilana Kurshan’s Teaching)

Sun, 28 Aug 2022 10:44:12 -0400

I share Ilana Kurshan's teaching on rabbinic midrash seeing Moses as a mother in transition, as they question whether, at the promised land border, God's refusing his entry is frustrating his desire to mother the people more, or frustrating his desire to claim "his turn" to actually have a life now that the children are leaving the nest. I include my own glosses, but make no mistake that this is Ilana Kurshan's teaching.

Eikev and the Torah of Ambivalence

Sun, 21 Aug 2022 12:57:15 -0400

In this d'var Torah, I discuss how parashat Eikev is the section of Torah most frought with ambivalences, from the text itself through the Rabbinic commentaries: blessing as bounty and overextension, independence and dependence, hardship and privilege, closeness and distance. I relate this to our lives directly in the examples of the college experience and of our relationship with God.

Ableism, Torah, and ”Greatness Comes from Being Lifted Up By Your Brothers”

Sun, 22 May 2022 11:53:46 -0400

How do we relate to the Torah's insistence that the kohanim who do the major rituals be without blemish or disability? Isn't that grossly ableist? I suggest the following. First, the Torah is not an idealistic description of a utopia of saints -- it forces us to recognize truths about human nature, and then create a society for real people like us, so it forces us to recognize our own prejudices and ableism, which are also active today. Second, there is a serious issue at stake involving the Offerings of Damaged Goods, which is a massive problem in our society today --which tells us a lot about ourselves and how we give. And third, I use the commentator Bartenura's commentary to offer a way the tradition is accepting human nature but leading us to how to refine it into inclusivity.

Judaism and Abortion: The Process of the Decision IS Religion

Tue, 10 May 2022 11:28:42 -0400

In this presentation, I present the Talmudic sources on Judaism's discussion of the status of the fetus, and I argue that what's been missing from the discussion --including the discussion of Jewish views -- is the fact that Judaism leaves open what the status of the fetus is between 40 days and full viability, but importantly assigns the process to the mother. Men have no say in it. In other words, the issue is not freedom of religion in the sense of one denomination versus another, but rather the freedom of the prospective mother to have her own relationship with God, as considers that in-between state of the fetus she carries, and what it means to her and to God as she makes her decision, and not let others tell her what it is or not. (One issue I wish I had made a bit clearer: around the 11 minute mark, I talk about the fact that Tractate Niddah specifies that between 40 and 80 days, the miscarriage is more than a normal period, and there is an ontological leap again starting at 80 days. The specifics here are that the woman at these two sections remains in a state of ritual impurity following the miscarriage, as she would for giving birth, because after 80 days there is even clear evidence of sexual organs. In other words, the Talmud is acknowledging that the embryo is developing into a fetus, and while a fetus is not a baby, it is still not a "nothing." In addition, many consider this stigmazing the woman to say she is in "ritual impurity," but recall the ritual impurity functioned as "maternity leave" and thus the Talmud is giving the woman maternity leave to recover from the miscarriage, it's not stigmatizing her.)

Believing in Miracles (or not) in 5 Minutes

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 17:38:17 -0400

One of my "standing on one foot while answering a humungous theological question" podcasts. "Rabbi, what do we mean by miracles? What is up with the Red Sea splitting?" I give my on-one-foot 5 minute answer, but we should all go and study (as Hillel famously said after answering his on-one-foot answer) afterward.

By the way, I refer to seeing a red butterfly in the answer: at a funeral and shivah I officiated at, it came up repeatedly that a butterfly would show up in their lives just at the time of remembering the widow's husband, who had a very special connection to butterflies.

Is the Wailing Wall an Orthodox Synagogue? The Kotel Agreement, Yuval Noah Harari and Anat Hoffman

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 11:46:18 -0400

At the same time as the Torah turns its pages to describe the creation and pattern of the Temple, with men, women, and children mixed together, and the haftarah describes the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem as the same, the Israeli government reneges on the Kotel Agreement to provide a separate space for mixed gender worship near the Wailing Wall, even while turning over the Wall officially to ultra extremist fundamentalist Jews who claim that the inclusion of women --or women leading prayer in the women's section-- is a fundamental affront to the original pattern (which is a lie). In this presentation, I quote extensively from three sources: the Haaretz article from 2020 called "What Yuval Noah Harari Thinks About Women’s Fight for Equal Rights at the Western Wall," David Golinkin's 2011 article "Is the Entire Kotel Plaza Really a Synagogue?" and Rabbinical Assembly's 2022 "Statement on Non-Implementation of Kotel Agreement."

Self-Improvement, Judgment, and Seeing God’s Back

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 08:05:00 -0500

While Judaism demands that one does not judge oneself too harshly, nor live in a place of self-defeating criticism, nevertheless there's a vital role for self-judgment to play in our learning from the past to walk with God and expand our ability to channel holiness into the world. In fact, since God loves us as we are, and even provides a Shabbat that makes us feel that the world is made for us as we are, it is vital we judge ourselves, because that's not the job God wants, nor is it the job for others to do.

Clothing God? Sewing as an Act of Lovingkindness

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 08:00:00 -0500

The Talmud tells us that the first great act of God's love (chesed, lovingkindness) was making clothing for Adam and his wife. Do we return the favor?

Does God Have a Plan for Us?

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 20:45:27 -0500

Joseph's dreams seem to predict the future and his role in it. So does God have a plan for us?

Lecture: Halakhic Sources, the Fetus, and the Morality of Abortion

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 17:31:19 -0500

The source sheet I'm reading from is at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R0Txiy6QvQiHo40hKSsHyafLernFjS8tXp0tJo7gPWA/edit?usp=sharing

This is a lecture to give the listener the Rabbinic sources that create distinctions and legal status for decisions around the criminalization of elective abortion, as discussed in the Supreme Court hearings.

Patriarchy, Gaze, Voice and Intersectionality? Exodus and bell hooks

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 13:59:35 -0500

Here I tease out the following ideas of bell hooks: 1. Our society valuing power over others as the paramount value, and rooted in the psychology of men. 2. This value playing out in drama as "the protagonist" as the center around which others must revolve, and often the only one whose name counts. 3. Oppositional gaze: the one who owns their justice perspective is the one who has the power to gaze at injustice [like Moses having the privilege to "gaze" at the taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave]. 4. Intersectional identity: our society tries to have our identities of oppression divided up -- say, of black, immigrant, poor, and woman-- because that plays into the system rather than seeing them all at once, at the "intersectionality" of our identites. 5. Finding our voice as loving ourselves enough to feel that we are fully ready to put that full loved identify forward, rather than perpetuating the system by finding ourselves falling short. 6. When we love ourselves, we can love others --meaning holding their ability to change into their full self-love and changing selves-- rather than fall back into power contests. These are applied the first six chapters of Exodus as: 1) Pharoah's actions about power over men, so he declares genocide on male babies (since they are a threat to him); men beating each other and finding this normal, and even threatening Moses with turning him in to show their power over him since his superior power identity is what they see, not his trying to help them. 2) Who has a name besides Moses? Not Pharoah. Not the Pharoah's daughter. Not Moses' parents, nor his sister. Not the handmaidens. Chapter 3 is all about "What is God's name?" to teach us that rather than the protagonist structure (one is important not the others), we are all equal as characters in God's story, rather than ego driving our own story where others play their parts in relation to us. 3) Oppositional gaze: Moses first leaves the palace grounds as a bar-mitzvah age teen, and he GAZES at what is happening and sees injustice. He "looks this way and that" because, as the midrash tells us, he is wondering why others aren't gazing at the injustice as he is. 4) Intersectionality: Is Moses Hebrew or Egyptian? He's both, and splitting the two up allows others to deny his subjectivity and power. Are the midwives Hebrew or Egyptian? Is Pharaoh's daughter powerful (as nobility) or powerless (as a woman)? The parashah continually plays on these ambiguous and intersectional identities. 5) Finding one's voice: this is the parashah of Moshe claiming he is poor of speech so he cannot speak truth to power, and he overcomes it. 6) Are the signs, wonders, and plagues just another power contest --the value basis of patriarchal society-- or is God trying to give Pharaoh chances over and over again to change, the basis of love though one must leave the relationship if one is not being treated the same in exchange?

Joseph‘s Brothers and Robert Bly‘s The Sibling Society

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 13:29:22 -0500

Robert Bly, one of America's great poets and poetry translators, recently died. In this presentation, I apply Bly's books of social commentary to the end of Genesis. Iron John described the effects of fathers turning over parenting duties to others --like the wrong-headed "kids learn from interacting with other kids" rather than with parents. It also argued for the simultaneous absence of initiative rites in American society. In The Sibling Society, Bly argued that American society represents an adolescent stage of development, not true adulthood. I apply both books to the entire end of the Book of Genesis.

Joseph, Hanukkah, and the Assimilation Narrative

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 13:07:30 -0500

These are my reflections upon Arnold Eisen's 2015 essay, "Joseph, Hanukkah, and the Dilemmas of Assimilation." Those who investigate the Hanukkah story quickly learn (simply by reading the Books of Maccabees in the apocrypha) that the events around the 186 BCE revolt of the Maccabees against the Hellenizing-Syrians do not involve a miracle of oil. Rather, following the decree by Antiochus IV that the Temple in Jerusalem be dedicated to Hellistic religion, the Maccabees first attack Hellenized Jews themselves, who show little to no resistance to the decree. (Josephus tells us, more or less, that the Greek sports stadium in Jerusalem was a far better draw to local Jews than the Temple.) The second part of the story involves the Maccabees attacking the Syrian-Greek forces themselves, and achieving victory. (Two hundred years later, living under the oppression of the Roman forces, and witnessing Roman massacres of Jews following rebellions, the Rabbis introduced the folktale of the oil to distract Jews from a story encouraging further rebellion against Hellenistic forces.) So, when we today read the original tale, it creates uncomfortable questions about assimilation. Aren't most American Jews going to sports games on Saturday rather than to temple? Aren't most American Jews unrecognizable from their peers, as Joseph was unrecognizable to his brothers? The simple narrative of assimilation states that American Jews were quick to assimilate for personal and social gain. In this presentation, I argue that this little-challenged narrative is oversimplified, wrong and damaging.

The Incommunicability of Experience and the Rape of Dinah

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 10:08:36 -0500

[WARNING: The second half of the podcast discusses the rape of Dinah and I share an account of sexual harrassment from recent congressional testimony.]

If the early chapters of Genesis are about where we come from, the second half of Genesis is about the experiences that change us, that make us who we are as adults, not through our own achievements but through what happens to us, from tragedy to transcendence, from rejection to love, from struggles with mental health, sexual harrasment, being cheated, to seeing God in a place. Little do we notice how in these chapters the experiences are incommunicable: the experience is the words of Torah --as in our lives they are experiences of the ineffable depths in which we are changed, in which we receive a new name-- but the figures don't speak of them to others, and certainly don't record their experiences in the self confessional blogs and interviews that dominate our media world today. And nowhere is this more poignant than the experience of sexual harrasment and rape, which I discuss using the reflections of Hadar's Rosh Yeshiva Aviva Richman.

Dara Horn‘s ”People Love Dead Jews” and the Erasure of Jewish Difference

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 16:03:12 -0500

In this sermon -- playing on the Rabbinic commentary that the name of the Torah portion that mentions Sarah's death is called "The Life [or Lives] of Sarah" because we should celebrate the lives she lead rather than think of her death-- I discuss Dara Horn's new book People Love Dead Jews, which argues that the non-Jewish world loves books about Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel because the stories of these dead Jews teaches us something universal and moralistic about ourselves, rather than challenging us to think of what Jewish lives are like, how they are different, how they might challenge us. How is it that Wiesel's Night went from its original form, a scathing accusation against the Euopean bystanders who let the Holocaust happen to a book about God's hiding? Because God's hiding happens in each of our lives, like a universalistic lesson about life's tragedies, and allows us to avoid the deep questions of Jewish difference and anti-Semitism. In this teaching, I also ask whether we Jews are guilty of this: inviting in our own Romantic visions of our ancestors --which allows us to live a two dimensional moralizing vision of them-- rather than embracing their difference, and practicing our own.

Changing our Relationship with Time from Productivity to Presence

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 14:46:11 -0400

It hasn't been very long in human history (two or three generations) that we live our lives according to a clock rather than according to the processes of our lives (waking up, milking the cow, putting the hay in the barn, taking the goats for their grazing...). This has changed our relationship to God, to ourselves, and to each other. We judge ourselves by our productivity, how much we can get done using this resource of time, how much demand we can meet from others before our next appointments. We live outside of time, in a negative relationship, rather than in time, in a positive relationship. Using Oliver Burkeman's book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, I reflect on how the pandemic first connected us to a positive relationship with time, vis a vis the Sabbatical Year, but then jerked us back to the negative relationship, as demands for productivity --now virtually impossible and harder than before-- were placed on our backs. How can we live in time, not through the standard of productivity, but through the invitation of presence?

The Potentially Limitless Commandment of Honoring Parents As They Age

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 08:10:00 -0400

In this dvar Torah, I share Talmudic stories of rabbis trying to honor their mothers in ways that are both comical and also poignant in their alluding to our individual (and often lonely) struggles to honor God and them, especially as they age, with seemingly no yardstick to compare ourselves and manage expectations.

Combatting the Curses Against Israel with History, not more Scapegoating

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 18:19:11 -0400

The last sections of the book of Numbers deal with the local tribes, themselves fighting and displacing each other, refusing to grant the Israelite refugees safe passage through their lands. As a consequence of this moral failing, they lose the right to keep the land --an important message of Torah. In fact, coupled with their denials of safe passage, they hire the famous Near-Eastern Bilaam to magically curse the Israelites with fraught words justifying violence against them. It's like this entire section was relived in the years approaching 1948, when local Arab populations opposed Jewish refugees buying land and living peacefully in British Mandate Palestine, and instead attacked them. Ever since they resort to Bilaam curses, the use of factually incorrect curse words of "Genocide," "Apartheid," "Settler Colonialism," "Ethnic Cleansing," "Daily Massacres of Children," and "Not Indigenous" to scapegoat Jews and justify violence against them, not just in Israel but in intimidation and harrassment on the campuses in the U.S. In this Yom Kippur morning sermon, I name this reenactment of the end of Numbers and propose that Jews respond not with compaints about anti-Semitism, but with a campaign of history, along with a renewed consciousness that is not a victim consciousness but is a creator consciousness that is inclusive of Arabs, so we don't lose our moral authority in the Land.

Instagram, Depression and the Serpent Voice: ”And They Knew They Were Naked”

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 08:43:42 -0400

The creation stories of Genesis blend mythological motifs with reflections on the moral consequences of human evolution. When we understand the serpent voice to be the appearance of the human inner voice --the beginnings of evolutionary, human self-consciousness, a consequence of eating of the fruit of the garden-- then the hiding that Adam does, not because they have disobeyed God (as one presumes on a first read) but because for the first time they know they are naked, is crucial to notice. The possibilities of self-consciousness are immense --they include becoming like God by living in past, present, and future at once, they include radical intentionality and subjectivity-- but also include the dark side, a preoccupation with self-consciousness in its most mundane meaning, a preoccupation with wondering what people think of one, the feeling of being naked in front of others, the nightmare of showing up at school in one's underwear. What do people think of us? Do they like us? What about our physical appearance are they reacting to? How do they compare us to others, favorably or unfavorably? This is the serpent voice in our heads, of our inner "I," the one that nips at our heels and we try to clobber on the head but only goes away only temporarily but always returns. Research shows that this serpent voice is amplified to monstrous degrees by social media: Are my posts liked? Are others making fun of my appearance in the photo? Am I totally ignored? Am I left out? How can I cultivate a persona that garners "likes"? How can I grown that persona, maintain it, even as it detaches from any connection to my authentic self, so when God says, "Ayekah?" Where/who are you really? God knows the self I'm wearing is the product of the serpent voice, my cultivated and emotionally crushing phony self?

The Halakhah of Zoom Minyan: Adding Windows to the House of Israel

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 17:43:26 -0400

Synagogues like mine have resorted to making virtual community over much of the pandemic. How do we do a heshbon nefesh of the experience: a reckoning of the pluses and minuses as we enter a new future of self-creation? What is the halakhah of it, what have we learned, what are the issues? In this Kol Nidrei sermon, I address these issues, as we consider who we wish to be as we enter the future.

The Victim Triangle: Moving from Blame to Self-Creation, from Drama to Authenticity

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 17:03:43 -0400

Our society is permeated with a victim mentality that presents itself as prophetic, but is punitive. Caught in the Victim Triangle, everyone must fit into a role of Victim, Persecutor, or Rescuer --both in individual dramas and in societal theory. Change presents itself only in the options of shifting roles in the triangle: persecutors must become victims, victims will fix things by teaching them (and society) a lesson, someone gets stuck in rescuer role. Is teshuvah, repentance, about being forced to experience the karma of society's ills, or is that a blame game? In this sermon, I present an alternative framework, rooted in systems psychology and in Torah: teshuvah is an act of Creation, and when one transcends the triangle, one reaches true authenticity in one's walking with others, walking with oneself, and walking with God.

It‘s Time to End the Fertility Bias: Our Shame in Shutting Out Those Without Children

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 10:46:21 -0400

How often do people say to me, "Rabbi, Rosh Hashanah is not about prayers, theology and sermons -- it's about getting together with family!" or "My grandfather was a model Jew because he was committed to his grandchildren" or "One does not know true awe until one has had children." And how often have I as a rabbi said similar things at a bat mitzvah or baby naming from the bimah, or when explaining a prayer like the one that says "You shall love God...through diligently teaching your children..." How does this feel to the unmarried, the willingly child-free, and those whose lives are not geared around children or grandchilden? How do we treat them in our community: as souls committed to covenant (perhaps more than those with children), or as incomplete human beings watching from the outside? Why aren't we talking more about Miriam, who has no husband or children in the Torah? Or about the Mother of Israel, the historical creator of the Israelite nation, the prophetess and leader Deborah? It's time we stop and realize that L'Dor Vador, from generation to generation, does not refer just to one's own children, but to the future of the Jewish people, something the childless and child-free often understand in a way that we can learn from them as our teachers.

Saving One Life is Saving the World: Jewish Law and the Death Penalty

Sun, 15 Aug 2021 20:01:53 -0400

In the parashah of "Shoftim" in Deuteronomy, we have the norms for shoftim v'shotrim, the judges and professional criminal justice system officials. We are commanded that tsedek tsedek tirdof, known as "justice, justice you shall pursue" though tsedek means "justice" in the sense of "righteousness," not in the sense of revenge. The parashah goes on to discuss capital crimes, an eye for an eye, and the death penalty. For many, they read it assuming that Judaism endorses the death penalty, with "eye for an eye" the "justice" principle underlying the norms. In this teaching, I show how "eye for an eye" and the death penalty have been understood in Judaism, how restorative justice is the underlying paradigm of Jewish law with the one exception being intentional murder. But in this special case of capital justice, the entire legal system is set on eliminating the death penalty so as not to risk killing even one innocent suspect. The famous Rabbinic dictum that "to save a life is to save an entire world" is used by the Rabbis in Mishnah Sanhedrin to argue for saving the life of the suspect in a capital case, for when we use the death penalty, and should we be wrong (common in America), we have done irretrievable harm to the fabric of the universe.

The Depth of Loving Torah and Being Loved Through It: Being Taught is to Be Loved

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 15:34:18 -0400

After Moshe recounts the 10 Commandments --the 10 "word-statements"-- in Deuteronomy chapter 5, we get the Shema and the Ve-Ahavta, we must Hearken to "these words," incribe them in our hearts, and return God's love by loving through teaching these words. What are the words? Given the context of chapter 5, it would make sense these are the 10 Commandments, perhaps to be the text of the mezuzah and teaching the VeAhavta is exhorting. Of course, the Rabbis argue vociferously that this cannot be, and just gives unwarranted support to Karaites and others who deny the Torah by reducing it to the 10 Commandments. (The Rabbis have some justification for their argument.) So "these words which I command you this day" become the entire set of teachings of the written Torah and our own interpretations that all happen through the act of God's love and our Love for God, and therefore the Mezuzah includes this selection about Love. What does it mean to love Torah? Delivered on the day of Tu B'Av, the annual Jewish "Valentine's Day" that celebrates falling in love and romance, I share my experience of love and loving a Torah that goes beyond sentences.

Leading our Children to Transcendence

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 09:00:00 -0400

The oldest, continually used blessing in the world is the Torah's "Priestly Blessing." May God bless you [with bounty] and guard you. May God's face radiate grace (of getting your needs met) upon you. May God turn God's face to you [when you don't get what you need] so [you do not feel alone but meet God there and] God places peace within you.

The Rabbis stress that the person blessing is merely a "window" to letting God in, but in this Dvar Torah I question whether this isn't exactly what we wish to avoid -- letting God in. We want to let us in! We spend our time building a world of domestic familiarity and home, and build our children up with their accomplishments. Transcendence runs absolutely against that: it puts you in the context of the Eternal drama, not your own: achievement, knowledge, and the cathedral of the self [we telling our hero stories] take a far second place in transcendence, where our ego is seen in its puniness, and we feel the calm of taking our place in the eternal dramas of humanity, nature, and experience. Transcendence teaches gratitude for participation in the human journey, calm, perspective, and the movement toward shalom (contentment) in one's lot, rather than protection. In this sermon, I ask how we lead our children to be prepared to encounter God, not us.

Reopening the Synagogue When People Are Coming up the Down Staircase

Wed, 26 May 2021 17:09:25 -0400

How do we reopen the synagogue after over a year of being virtual? For some it's procedural: distance appropriately, follow guidelines, limit numbers, maybe wait on the food. But the Temple is not a gathering of bodies, it's a gathering of souls. How do we reopen appropriately to be a holy community, one that recognizes each other as souls? One of my favorite mishnayot speaks to this, and I was happy to be scooped by Professor Naomi Kalish in applying it to us today: https://www.jtsa.edu/struggling-to-celebrate There are four categories of people who went up the downstaircase at the Temple, and down the up staircase: the one in mourning, the one caring for a relative, the one who has been isolated, and the one who has lost a precious object. In this Dvar Torah on Emor, I apply these to our norms for a holy reopening.

Helpful picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Huldah_Gates3344.JPG

God the Mother

Sun, 09 May 2021 10:18:58 -0400

Leviticus ends with a long list of horrifying predictions (or curses) of the vicious suffering of the Israelites when they eventually enter the Land and break the covenant. Western Civilization has been shaped by European Christian intellectuals who created the unchallenged image (and therefore a Western bias) that the God of the Old Testament is a God who is disposed toward anger and punishment, who seems to enjoy punisment and retribution (and thus God had to be made flesh in the Son to introduce Love). In this podcast, I ask us to hear these verses as the words of the Mother, who, as in Wendell Berry's poem (which I read at the end) sees the Mother foreseeing one's sins, suffering in that foreknowledge with you, before you, with love and forgiveness already there symbolized by the made bed, the "you can always come home" that transcends the future into the past. Is the angry God we project, really the No-God of Jeremiah, the idol of our own making, which externalizes our own anger at climate change, social and racial inequality, rather than God the Mother who suffers along with us within the thorn bush of the Burning Bush but is not consumed?

Ross Douthat, Biblical Impurity, and Antipathy toward the Temple

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 17:39:34 -0400

Is Leviticus's insistence that those with skin afflictions (as well as having buried the dead) not go to Temple an exclusionary punishment for being sick? Or is that our modern reading which presumes that religion is exclusionary and judgmental? In this presentation, I use Ross Douthat's essay "Can the Meritocracy Find God?
The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion" as a way to talk about America's prejudices against religion, and my particular concern that even Jewish leaders like me are too silent in the face of the current hype that all the cool innovation (and funding) is happening outside of our legacy institutions [which actually is an unchallenged claim mainly by people who don't go to synagogue] and that our success as communities should be judged as to how easy we make it for unaffiliated Jews to get their needs met without having to attend the Temple as it exists in our day. Is that respectful of the Temple?

Jewish Law on Cremation and Burial, and What We're Facing as the Numbers Rise

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 15:32:12 -0400

As the percentage of Jews opting for cremation has risen from around 2% to over 20% in twenty years, how do we balance the mitzvah of burial of Jewish remains with the prohibition on cremation?

The Tabernacle -- and our Lives-- as a Purposeful Composition

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 12:44:16 -0400

Inspired by the teachings of the great American ceramicist, Richard DeVore, I examine what the mishkan tells us about the nature of artistic composition, drawing a stark contrast between Golden Calves and Purposeful Composition, in Exodus, and especially in how we live our lives.

Keruvim, Cherubim, Griffins, Sphinxes, and the angel Rafael

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:41:00 -0500

What were the Keruvim, the two hybrid beast angels 10 cubits high protecting the Ark of the Covenant, and from between whom God speaks? I rehearse all the theories, and end with a Maimonidean vision of what the angel as an extension of God's presence really is.

The Building of the Tabernacle through the Lens of the Black Church

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 16:12:00 -0500

Given that some of the most influential narratives and Torah legislation are but a few verses long, why is so much of the book of Exodus chapters and chapters of detailed, repetitive descriptions of the instructions and building of the Tabernacle (Mishkan), the priestly uniforms, the utensils, the hundreds of curtain rods and hooks? I answer this question through my reflecting on the observations of Henry Louis Gates in his PBS Series (during Black History month) on the history of the Black Church in America.

Making Sense of the Most Disturbing Statement in the Bible

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:41:46 -0500

No statement by God seems more morally challenging than the prophet Samuel's demand for the complete annhilation of the Amalekites and their animals, followed by his condemnation of Saul for failing to kill King Agag and the choicest of the animals. The Amalekites are equated with the nature of evil itself, and so the resurgence of evil and especially genocidal anti-Semitism throughout the rest of time is somehow linked to the failure to "complete the job" of vanquishing them earlier on. In this very brief teaching, I try to learn a lesson we might otherwise resist from this troublesome piece of Tanakh: the tendency to fail to complete the job, often through unacknowledged selfish interest that hides beneath the seemingly noble action of "moving on."

"God, Let me receive good counsel!" The 5 minute practice that will change your life

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 09:41:09 -0500

In this 5 minute teaching, I read a poem by Zbigniew Herbert and then share a seriously short spiritual practice that involves receiving the deepest of advice. In that, I connect the prayer Hashkiveinu to the Mourners Kaddish to my own experience of practicing it.

Jonah versus Moshe: When Do We Hold the King Accountable and When Do We Move On?

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 12:38:35 -0500

As America faces what to do and think about impeachment, I reflect on the dramatic difference between the book of Jonah and account of the final plagues in Exodus where God hardens Pharoah's heart. In the former, God is so anxious to accept an apology, move on, and look to the future that Jonah wants to refuse God's service, and in the other God prevents the moving on that Moshe is so anxious to get to.

Zikaron and the Filibuster: The Memory of Slavery and Dreaming God's Dream for America

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 11:23:00 -0500

Parashah Bo repeatedly connects the memory of slavery to the establishment of Jewish rituals for all time, from the main features of the Passover seder to the First Fruit offerings in the Temple to ones we forget to associate with the memory of slavery like tefillin. (Later, even Shabbat will be firmly connected to the memory of slavery.) We in America have done the opposite by divorcing our institutions from the memory of slavery: case in point, the Filibuster which was not a patriotic institution of the founding fathers but rather an attempt to preserve slavery by Southern senators, and then to preserve Jim Crow laws. So should we destroy our American institutions because of these connections? Are we to be anarchists? No, the Torah tells us to connect the memory of slavery to taking action in this world to make God's dream for us come true. That's our imperative. Reconnect our institutions to their roots so we can be open to what it is God is dreaming for us, what God is dreaming for America.

Geneivat Daat: The Theft of Subjectivity by Media and its Pull Upon Us in the name of Justice

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 15:00:12 -0500

I examine the sin of Geneivat Daat -- theft of another's consciousness through words that might be parse-able but lead another to think something is true which isn't-- as the prevalent sin in a world of fragmented media tailored to incite us, and I relate this to former Jewish Theological Seminar chancellor Arnold Eisen's insight that we readers cheer Moshe on in his riotous act in the name of justsice, only to wonder how we found ourselves in that dubious moral place.

The Dreams of Genesis and Our Dreams: Our Alignment with the God World

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 21:39:33 -0500

The saga of Yosef is about dreaming beginning to end, with the parashah of Miketz as itself operating according to dream logic. Are dreams special in the Torah, unlike ours, as some kind of prophecy? Or is much of Genesis calling our attention to the God world all around us, the one we only know through "knowledge by inacquaintance" (Abraham Joshua Heschel)? Is it telling us that our conventional "common denominator" way of processing and understanding the world is flawed, limited, one of not knowing God is in this place, that other souls are in this place? How do we get there? And how could we possibly when we deprive our teenagers, our children, ourselves of sufficient sleep to even align ourselves with the world our dreams teach us to enter in Torah consciousness?

Reuniting Religion and Psychology: Jacob's Dreams and the Therapeutic Uses of Psilocybin

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 09:15:00 -0500

I relate Jacob's dream of the stairway to heaven and his dream of God-wrestling to the therapeutic uses of psilocybin to treat PTSD, depression, addiction, and end-of-life fear.

"It's Their Money!"- The Ketubah, Traditional Jewish Marriage, and the Defrauding of Rachel and Leah

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 12:02:05 -0500

The stories of Jacob being defrauded by Lavan are taken to be the plot of the famous period of Jacob working for Lavan for 20 years before fleeing in the middle of the night. In this teaching, I show that this is a misunderstanding. Jacob has worked for 20 years for Lavan without being paid, but only 6 of those years are for Jacob and his arrangements with Lavan! The first 7 years are to earn money that goes directly to Leah, and the next 7 years are for the money that goes to Rachel! The story is about THEIR being defrauded! Why does everyone miss this? The reason is that we misunderstand Jewish marriage: when we read a Ketubah, when we read the literal meanings of the Jewish ceremony, we presume this is an acquisition of the woman like she's property being transferred from father to husband. But that's a misreading: the dowry --which comes from the father or from the woman herself-- is added to the "bride price" (money paid by the man), and the sum of these are then given to the woman in a kind of "lockbox" that cannot be touched and belongs to her. When we understand this, the Biblical story, the nature of the ketubah, and the mutuality of the covenant of marriage (which is not a form of acquisition) are transformed into their proper perspective.