Authentic, Compassionate Judaism For The Thinking Person

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 a

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 h

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

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, soc

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?

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?

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. 

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.

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.  

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."

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.

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.

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.

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 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?