Sermons
One of the strangest, most difficult and at times most exciting responsibilities of being a rabbi is preparing and delivering a sermon. It is a strange form of communication, almost completely “one way,” with little opportunity for the congregation to respond or for the rabbi to know how it was received. The blank sheet of paper before beginning to write is so daunting: what should I talk about? What should I say about it? How should I say it? But looking back now over forty years of sermons, I realize that being required to stand up in front of the congregation and open my mouth and speak has forced me to think deeply about my own life, Judaism, and our world. Below are many recent sermons and some of the sermons from the past which capture important moments in my life, or the life of our community or the world.
2025 CBB Annual Meeting Senior Rabbi Report
2025 CBB Annual Meeting June 22, 2025
Senior Rabbi Report
I would like to look back with you over my 21 years as the Senior Rabbi of this congregation. Over the past twenty-one years, I think that my priorities have been fairly consistent.
Remarks at Retirement Gala
Remarks at Retirement Gala
May 4, 2025
There were many other things about being a rabbi that sounded good, but what drew me was the opportunity for intimacy.
I had no idea, at age 20, what I was getting myself into. The opportunities for intimacy have been the most terrifying, the most difficult, and the most meaningful moments of my career.
Sacred Empty Space
Yom Kippur, Oct 12, 2024
For the past 47 years, that purpose has been my north star....my primary identity, my work, and my purpose on this earth has been to teach Judaism. Now what? That question is both terrifying and exhilarating. I feel an empty space opening at the center of my life. An empty space that is alive with possibility, and with uncertainty.
CCAR Talk on God
August 30, 2024
We rabbis, and some of our congregants, would like to set God at the center of our lives. We understand from all of our sources that for a Jew, God is fundamental, central and unavoidable. And yet, and this is the crux of the challenge: the ultimate reality of God is utterly impenetrable and mysterious.... Most of us cannot begin to comprehend the physical structures of our universe. How can we hope to say anything meaningful about the creative source which brought that universe into being?
Children and Stories
December 23, 2023
it rarely works to begin a story by speaking a name of God. In my experience, it is best to begin with a human story. To awaken memory and imagination, with colors and sounds, tastes and smells. People we have known, a place we have been, words we have sung, emotions we felt, long ago but which remain in our bodies…ready to be brought back to mind. And then, having arrived at the palace of memory and imagination, to give it a name. Singer of the blue-black night; Loving Teacher of Israel, Life and Death Dancer.
In the Cave of Lascaux
August 5, 2022
We have not forgotten the entrance to the cave.
We remember how to go in and to bring that cave to life.
Deep in the caves of Lascaux, I discovered that our Jewish tradition is not a lost cause.
Pandemic Sabbatical
June 26, 2020
The job of being a rabbi has been the great honor and privilege of my life. But it’s a job that never ends. From early in the morning until late at night. The sadness and the joy, the weight of the past and the questions about the future. And all of the people! tiny children, hormonal teenagers, stressed out parents, aging seniors. All with desires, needs and opinions! There is nothing more exciting, nothing more interesting, nothing more holy than what happens in this community. But a rabbi needs to rest.
My Mentor Rabbi Richard Levy
June 28, 2019
Richard was a towering intellect. A powerful, clear-eyed thinker. And he prayed. He spoke to us first year students openly and without embarrassment about his relationship with God. Richard was my first living proof of the possibility of holding onto both faith and reason. Religion and science.
At the Rabbis’ Convention
March 8, 2013
three hundred rabbis all in one building is a huge concentration of Torah, of ego, of compassion, of Jewishness, of power, of self-promotion and of humor. I was there in rabbi-land for just about two days and this is my report back to you.
On God
March 30, 2005
At the Central Conference of American Rabbis
to speak of God’s unknowability is in no way to deny God’s reality. On the contrary, by insisting upon God’s unknowability, we open up a sacred empty space, a holy of holies, inside ourselves within which God can dwell and from which the voice of God can issue like fire.
1st Sermon at CBB
August 6, 2004
here is what I have realized after 47 years of learning: the very best thing I can do is to listen carefully to all of my teachers, to all of you here tonight and to everyone else I have mentioned, and then to go to myself, to find a way, a time and a place to become still, and to listen to the voice of my own heart. And that is the way I will learn to do this job.
On Halakha
Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis, June 1995
I am trying to sing a much more complicated Jewish song than my parents did and perhaps am singing it with much less grace and beauty than they sang, and continue to sing, that simple folksong. But after a person learns the easy songs, they do crave the challenge of something more difficult. That is where I am personally--caught between a childhood of simple, touching Judaism and a vision of a wonderfully complex and demanding ideal.