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.
Gathered Unto His People
September 12, 2014
our Torah simply does not provide a description of the afterlife. But it offers a beautiful phrase to express that a person has died: “He was gathered unto his people.” I do not need or want a doctrine of the afterlife. I will never be ready to pledge allegiance to a belief about where my father is going. But I will be happy to allow my imagination to run free, and to imagine him reunited with his friend Earl, his best friend from childhood, whom he lost so long ago, and Nick and Stan and Jerry and his mentors Paul and John and George and his mother Dora, his father Samuel whom he never met, after whom I am named, and his many aunts and uncles Ida and Alice and Bertha and Ben and Itch and Louie and Charlie…
When he is good and ready, and not before, he will be gathered unto his people; all of those who raised him on Vienna Street, in the old Jewish neighborhood of Rochester, New York.
To Slow Down
August 29, 2014
As Marian and I walked through the mountains, we slowed down and met some new friends…all those wildflowers… and learned their names. This is our people’s old wisdom, contained in the ancient commandment to rest on Shabbat.
Tonight God is calling us, urging us to slow down, asking us “Where are you?” As we enter this season of turning, may we find the quiet to hear that voice, and the strength to turn toward God and to respond: Hineni. Here I am.
Gaza War 2014
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.
The Day of Remembering
Rosh Hashanah 2013
We teach our children that on Rosh Hashanah we look back and review the past year, but honestly, who does that? It’s simply not possible. Way too much has happened over those 365 days, which come to over 6,000 waking hours. 6,000 hours of shopping, cooking, eating, cleaning, emailing, watching television, posting and lurking on Facebook, driving, reading, gardening, waiting in line, worrying, exercising, playing, working….. 6,000 hours….and who can possibly remember and distinguish one hour from the next?
The John Muir Trail
August 30, 2013
Upon returning from 3 weeks in the wilderness
Marian and I went on our own exodus journey. We were far away from all human civilization: no cars, virtually no human structures, no roads….deep, deep into the wilderness….if we had needed to get out, it would have taken us two long days to walk out.
Ubumwe
April 26, 2013
But listen: here is something equally difficult to understand. In the midst of the carnage, an 82-year-old American white woman named Rosamond Carr was evacuated, wearing only her nightdress, and then returned….unbelievably…in August of the same year to establish an orphanage for children of the genocide. She called the place “Imbabazi” meaning “a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give.” Our story tonight begins in that place…in Imbabazi.
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.
The Muslims and Us
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.
Running Away
Yom Kippur 2012
Tonight I would like to explore together what it means to stop running. To courageously take a stand. That is the opposite of running away: to stand our ground.
The Stars
August 10, 2012
But as long as it was still Shabbat, I had permission…in fact I was commanded…not to work. Shabbat offers that liberation to anyone suffering from the pace of modern life. So, having nothing that I needed to do, I went to my bookshelf and pulled off a book I had bought years ago, but never read, titled The Stars: A New Way to See Them, by H.A. Rey….and began to read.
Song of Songs
April 22, 2011
Then an electric current passed between me, and my rabbi and that girl…..and I felt the frozen earth thawing within me, and the Exodus alive inside me, and the Jewish people being born again within me. I heard a voice calling…and I have no idea whether it was the voice of my rabbi, or the voice of the text, or the voice of God….declaring “arise, and come away.” That morning I learned what Rabbi Akiva meant when he said, “All of the books of the Bible are holy. But the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.”
February 8, 2011
All of this has happened so quickly that it is still too soon to understand what these changes mean for us. Just a couple of months ago, we saw long-standing, powerful dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia collapse in a matter of days, brought down by uprisings orchestrated on Facebook. In the aftermath of those revolutions, it is no longer possible to regard Facebook as trivial. The social network has emerged as a powerful force in our world. That is a fact. But we do not know: Will it be a blessing or a curse?
The Holy Life of Naomi Gerber
March 11, 2011
We Jews have for thousands of years, been praying at a wall in Jerusalem. From her daughter Naomi, Louise learned and is now teaching us, what it means to be driven to our knees, and to pray before a wall. Shabbat Shalom.
Shabbat Tablecloth
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.”
The Jewish People
Rosh Hashanah 2010
Mount Moriah—mountain of yirah and r’iyah…fear and vision! What is that place to us? We are here in Santa Barbara, on the other side of the planet. What is our connection to the Kotel, and its crowds of black-hatted Jews? What is our connection to the Old City of Jerusalem, with the tense alley-ways of the Muslim Quarter and the tacky and commercialized Jewish Quarter? In fact, what is our connection with Israel? That country of traffic jams and tourist traps and lethal hatreds?
Is Shakespeare Torah?
July 23, 2010
Is it OK to say such a thing? Is it OK for a rabbi to say such a thing from the bimah on Friday night? Can one speak of Shakespeare and the Torah in one breath? Is Shakespeare a kind of Torah?….Is Homer Torah?, or Dante, or Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson for that matter? I’ve wondered about that question for thirty years, and am still stuck on it. Does God speak to us through the voices of all the great human authors and teachers? Are they all Torah, or is only the Torah, Torah?
Leonard Cohen
September 4, 2009
Last week, on Thursday night, my family and I were driving home from Sequoia National Park, barreling down Route 5 and across on the 126 at night, in the dark, singing along with Leonard Cohen….all these songs and more. Marian, Rachel, Ari and I each have our own, very different views of God, and Judaism. Our kids are now 19 and 21. But the four of us were there together in the dark….singing Who By Fire, Hallelujah, If it be Your Will, Anthem. It was one of the nicest moments we have had with our children in recent memory.
Hanukkah and Miracles
December 29, 2008
That shared experience kindled a light in our group. An old light, that burns without end. The same light Moses saw burning and burning in the bush in the wilderness. The same flame the Jews saw glowing from the tiny oil lamp in the Jerusalem Temple, day after day after day. That light blazed in our midst last Wednesday night. It was a miracle, nothing supernatural, but still a wonder…a revelation of the hidden presence of God.
The Olympics
August 22, 2008
There in front of us, we see a theater in which athletes are faced with our universal human task---how to cope, how to triumph over the chaotic thoughts and the stormy emotions racing every minute through our conscious and sub-conscious mind. Not to turn them off completely, but to harness them and direct their energy toward the goal line….for the athlete, the goal is the medal podium. For the rest of us, the goal is a good life.
Jury Duty
August 15, 2008
We live in a world full of falsehood, especially in the public sphere, in which no one believes that anyone else is really what they seem to be… But for a brief time, this past Tuesday and Thursday, in the Santa Barbara courthouse, I found myself in an extraordinary situation. There in that very public place, most of us were meeting each other for the first time. I have no doubt that over the course of that trial, there will be plenty of spin, deception and innuendo. But at least during the process of jury selection, I felt privileged to be sitting in a world in which words still matter, in which an oath still matters, in which the truth still matters.