• Joy to Sadness to Joy

    At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, Moshe tells the Children of Israel that when they enter the land and grow crops there they must bring the first fruits to the Temple. When the farmer brings this basket of first fruits he has to recite a four-line summary of the history of…

  • To merit long life

    In this week’s Torah portion, we are commanded to send away a mother bird before taking her young from the nest. The reward for this mitzvah is long life in the land which God has given us. There is one other mitzvah with this same reward, honoring one’s parents. Both are about parenthood and the…

  • Restraint in Destruction

    In this week’s Torah portion, Re’eh, the Torah writes: “You must destroy all the sites at which the nations you are to dispossess worshiped their gods, whether on lofty mountains or on hills or under any luxuriant tree. Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the…

  • Bless Out Loud: Permission, Mindfulness, Community

    This week's Torah portion, Eikev, contains the only blessing that is commanded in the Torah, the Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals). The Torah says, “And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God, on the good land which God has given you.” The Torah is clear about saying a blessing after we eat,…

  • You shall eat, be satisfied, and bless the Lord your God

    This week’s Torah portion, Eikev, contains the only blessing that is commanded in the Torah, the Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals). The Torah says, “And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God, on the good land which God has given you.” The Torah is clear about saying a blessing after we eat,…

  • Embracing Life’s Absurdity: Moshe’s Existential Challenge

    This week’s d’var Torah is dedicated to my colleague long ago, Rabbi James Diamond, z”l, a sensitive chacham who first brought this Midrash to my attention and who died tragically—gone in the blink of an eye. This week's Torah portion, Ve’etchanan, begins with Moshe recalling his plea to God to be allowed to enter the…

  • Morality, Accountability, and Questioning our Leaders

    In a way, the Torah ended last week. We finished the book of Bamidbar (Numbers), in which the Jewish people arrive at the banks of the Jordan River, and that is where the Torah ends. But as we know, there is a fifth book, Devarim, which means words. Moshe reviews the last 40 years, tweaking…

  • Celebrating Amid Grief

    This year the High Holidays from Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah are different from last year. On the one hand, we cannot allow the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people to quash our joy of celebrating the holidays and keeping the Torah, but on the other hand, the resonance of October 7th leaves us…

  • Bringing Torah to the Thirsty

    Studies show that members of the American generation now coming of age, Gen-Z, are both more likely than the generations before them to be depressed and anxious and at the same time interested in spirituality more than other generations.   I believe this paradoxical state of affairs creates an important obligation for religious communities which…

  • Worthiness as the children of the Lord our God

    In this week’s parsha, Re’eh, the Torah writes, “You are children of the Lord your God, do not cut yourself (out of anguish) when someone dies.” Rashi comments: “Do not cut yourself when someone dies, as the Amorites do, since you are children of God and it is fitting that you should look nice and…

  • Grace or Gratitude? Understanding God’s Gifts in Love and Merit

    Last week’s parsha began with Moshe beseeching God to let him cross into Israel, “V’etchanan el Hashem,” “I pleaded with God at that time, saying…Let me, I pray, cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan…” Rash”i comments that the word va’etchanan (to plead or beseech) means to request…

  • Mourning the Temple in the 21st Century

    This week we commemorated Tisha B’av, the ninth day of the month of Av, the saddest in the Jewish year, on which we recall the destruction of the Temple and the exile. Our state of being for 2000 years was exile. Until 1948 we took exile for granted, and awaited the messiah to come and…

  • Disagreement and the Search for Truth

    This week, we are in the midst of the nine days of diminished joy leading up to Tisha B’av, the day which commemorates the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people from the land of Israel. The Talmud writes (Yoma 9b): “Due to what reason was the First Temple destroyed? It…

  • Shabbat Shuvah and the Transformation of the Self

    This Shabbat is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return which falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each year.  Why is Shabbat Shuvah so significant? After all, we don’t refer to the Monday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the Monday of teshuvah. Shabbat plays a special role in the process of teshuvah, return…

  • Understanding Our Collective Covenant

    In this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim, there are several words in the Torah scroll with seemingly extraneous dots on top of each letter in the verse, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all…

  • One friendly greeting can inspire world peace

    This week I saw the movie Golda. The movie focuses on Golda Meir during the course of the Yom Kippur War. (For more on Golda Meir’s life, be sure to get the new book Golda Meir by our fellow congregant Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt.) I did not know a great deal about the Yom Kippur War,…

  • Exploring Divine Justice and the Mystery of Suffering

    In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, the Torah writes: “If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Send the mother bird…

  • The Power of Habit

    This week’s haftarah, from the book of Isaiah, reassures us that God ultimately will comfort the children of Israel from the pain of exile and the destruction which they have suffered. When referring to the Jewish people’s pain, the haftarah relies on an interesting metaphor – a cup of wine.  “Arise Jerusalem, which has drunk…

  • Navigating the Jewish Journey of Exile and Rebuilding

    This week’s haftarah, the third of seven haftarahs of comfort we read following Tisha B’Av, begins by addressing the Jewish people as “aniya [afflicted]” and “soarah [storm-tossed]”. The meaning of the word soarah – storm tossed – is usually a reference in Tanach to a ship in rough waters, as in the phrase in the…

  • Moving Forward with Imperfection

    In his reminiscence of the Jewish peoples’ forty years of travel through the desert, Moses says in this week’s Torah portion, Eikev: “God said to me, ‘Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. I will inscribe on the tablets…