Friday, June 27, 2025

Congregation Bnai Brith

Lifting our eyes toward the mountains means looking toward the sunrise.  The new day, the future.  In this moment as I stand poised on the verge of retirement, and we as a community, stand poised between our past and our future, let me share with you just a little of my sense of this Santa Barbara Jewish community. 

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

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. 

Yom Kippur Oct 11, 2024

here is a new updated Shabbat chuppah, a simple and humble Shabbat structure for this Jewish community, the holy congregation of Santa Barbara.  Our four poles are still:  A Shabbat tablecloth, a Shabbat delicacy, a Shabbat garment, and the simplest possible Shabbat ritual of lighting two candles.  And over those four chuppah poles let us spread a canopy of time with loving friends.

February 9, 2024

Our sisters from Israel came to us, across a vast distance, and with their powerful voices, opening to us their broken hearts, they brought us together. Now, after October 7th, more than ever, we know that Israel is the living, beating heart of our people. Now we are family, bound together in grief and in joy, the Jews of Santa Barbara and the Jews of Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

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.

Tuesday November 21, 2023

            An old Jewish teaching observes that “When senseless hatred reigns on earth, and human beings hide their faces from one another, then heaven is forced to hide its face.  But when love comes to rule the earth, and human beings reveal their faces to one another, then the splendor of God will be revealed.”

June 2, 2023

The house we are building together is an invisible, spiritual structure, built of friendships, and memories, shared grief and celebrations, deep learning and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of acts of kindness and connections between one soul and another.  That is the house of living Judaism that we are building together.

Friday night, March 24, 2023

many traditional Jews to this very day look forward to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the restoration of the sacrifices. I do not. But just as I missed the physicality of being together during the endless zoom gatherings of the Covid lockdown, I miss the physicality of the korbanot. The powerful intimacy that comes from being together, in the presence of fire and smoke and the pleasing fragrance of praying by cooking.

February 3, 2023

We are here in a church, Trinity Lutheran Church, whose members have welcomed us into their home. Not just for tonight, but for virtually every Friday night and Saturday morning for the next year and a half. As you can see, the cross--which declares the essence of their faith-- is concealed by this curtain. Our friends here at Trinity have allowed us to obscure their most sacred symbol during our services, so that we can feel at home here. It is a breathtaking, inspiring, heart-warming gesture of hospitality.

January 22, 2023

… it’s not easy getting ready to leave now, for a year and a half, or however long it’s going to take. We had better have a good reason, for all this hassle. I want to say as clearly as possible: We are not going to all this trouble, just to make this place more beautiful. It is already beautiful. We are disrupting our life so that this sacred place can undergo a metamorphosis. The most important transformation of this home of ours since it was first built almost sixty years ago. We are changing what it means to be a synagogue.

May 8, 2020

I felt a huge wave of sadness wash over me, as I watched everyone on the screen and heard only myself.  That was such a lonely moment, and I thought I don’t know if I can sustain this for months and months and months.  If I can’t find people to sing with, I’ll go crazy! Then I went out to my backyard and sat quietly and listened to the birds, and slowly realized that I was surrounded by living, singing, praying voices.   

Friday night, March 27 2020

This year the old Passover story, out of our distant past, is suddenly speaking directly to us. Not only to us, the Jewish people, but to all of us, the entire Human Family.

After the Montecito Debris Flow

January 12, 2018

In the early, dark hours of the morning last Tuesday, the mountains above Montecito melted like wax, in the geologic phenomenon called a “debris flow,” or what in Japan, they call a “yamatsunami,” a “mountain tsunami.”  While those of us living in Goleta and Santa Barbara slept peacefully in our beds, our friends living in Montecito were awakened by a pounding, earth-shattering, house crushing river of mud, boulders, trees, cars, and...heartbreakingly... human bodies pouring down through Montecito. Wherever we were that night, our lives will never be the same.

March 4, 2016

For thirty years I have lived here in Santa Barbara without curiosity about local history.  Without learning the names of the Channel Islands.  Without knowing the names of the wildflowers.  With no sense that this place might have a claim on me….that I could live here and be at home.  Now, my father has died and my mother is talking about moving to Boston, to be close to my sister.  Rochester is slipping away from me.   If I want a home, somewhere on this earth, it looks like it will have to be Santa Barbara.  How do we make a place home? 

August 1, 2014

…what I cannot understand is the mortal terror of Lieut. Hadar Goldin’s family who began Shabbat this evening knowing that their son had been captured alive by Hamas. And I cannot understand the grief of the Palestinian parent who finds their child dead in the rubble after an airstrike. And I cannot understand why after 3,000 years hatred still flourishes between the descendents of Abraham, or for that matter why the human race as a whole has not yet come to its senses, and set aside its hatreds and fears. This is the reality that we cannot understand, but which concerns us to the core of our being. Woe to us if we do not tremble.

Yom Kippur 2012

When we dialogue with our Muslim neighbors, we will not agree about everything.  We will disagree, sometimes passionately.  But the question is how we will disagree.  And whether we will press forward and continue to talk.

Yom Kippur 2010

A Shabbat tablecloth, a Shabbat delicacy, a Shabbat garment, and the simplest possible Shabbat ritual of candles, wine and challah.  A humble beginning.  We don’t need a cathedral…a simple structure will do.  But we do need that.  A new Shabbat covenant, one to which we all can say “yes.” 

February 9, 2007

All of us are frail.  All of us are frightened.  Even God.    We all need encouragement and we all need strength. This is why we come here, and this is why, like Moses and like Isaiah, like Sylvia Glass and like Janet Laichas, we grab hold of the fiery coal of Torah, and set it in our mouths.

Chazak chazak, v’nitchazek.  Be strong, be strong. And let us strengthen one another.