God is always confusing. We never know what to think. But that is especially true now in this fraught theological season between commemorating the Shoah (April 24), honoring soldiers who fell in Israel’s wars and victims of terrorism on Yom Hazikaron (April 30), and celebrating the birth of the State of Israel on om Ha’atzmaut (May 1). Tomorrow we …

Led by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

What happens when we lose our loved ones before we lose them? This happens to so many of our families. Our loved one experiences a slow decline, cognitively, or physically, that takes place over years that feels like forever. The decline crowds out earlier chapters. Our mother has not been herself for so long I can’t even remember what she used to …

In 1987 Oprah Winfrey read a book that changed her life. What happened to her as a result of reading that book, the unanticipated lesson she learned, remains fresh and urgent for her 38 years later. The book, by author Toni Morrison, was a novel called Beloved in which Morrison attempts to show what it was like to be a slave. What did slavery do to…

Powerful leaders who lie are as old as the Bible. Our Haftarah tomorrow, King David’s song of gratitude to God (2 Samuel 22:1-51), contains a big fat lie—a lie so obvious, so brazen, that one wonders how he had the temerity to utter it. King David says of himself: The Lord rewarded me according to my merit, He requited the cleanness of my hands. Fo…

How is this Passover different from all other Passovers? How is the seder we are doing tonight different from all the other seders we have ever done? Let me share a recent conversation I had with a good friend. We have a beloved member of our shul whose mother was born in Londorf, Germany. She was taken with all the other Jews of Londorf to Auschwi…

In 1992 Rabbi Joseph Telushkin published a book entitled Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About Jews. While he dedicated the book to his three daughters, the first chapter is about how hard it is for generations in a Jewish family to understand one another; how easy it is for frictions and misunderstandings to grow. Chapter one is entit…

Can one person change the world? That is the question at the end of the tractate Sanhedrin. The word "Sanhedrin" means the supreme judicial, civic, legal, religious authority in ancient Israel. The Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin is about justice-the human beings, institutions, procedures and protocols, evidentiary rules, safeguards, that enable human …

Rabbi Mishael Zion comes from a Haggadah-filled home: he is co-author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007) and The Israeli Haggadah (2024), together with his father Noam Zion, who is the author of A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah (Hartman, 1997). Mishael was ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Ne…

This week, I was speaking with a member who has been struggling with an intense family situation and was heading into a tense and painful meeting. She was riding in a Lyft. The driver was playing Christian radio quietly in the front. A few minutes before they arrived at their destination, she heard something on the radio that piqued her interest. "…

Shall we invite the troubling headlines—from Israel, Gaza, America, our world—to our seders? Are our seders supposed to be a joyful way to avoid the world (family, friends, songs, children’s skits, plays, games, great food, lots of wine, tasty desserts), or an invitation to engage the world and think out loud together about how we can make it bette…

In the Torah God tells us that from time to time God will hide God’s face. This would seem to be such a time. How do we find God in our troubled world together?

A woman named Jessica Sklar, her husband and their two children were happily living their lives in Pacific Palisades when their house burned down. Since losing all their earthly possessions, they have been wandering in the wilderness. In less than two months, this family has moved five times, from A B & B X5. In the home they used to love, they had…

How are we to understand the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and the stated intent of the federal government to deport him? It is good. He is an Israel hater. Finally the federal government is cracking down on Israel hate and Jew hate that have been running rampant on college campuses, leading to the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students and supp…

Robert Housman established Yad Chessed so he could help his neighbors struggling in Boston’s Jewish community. In the early years, he ran it by himself, with help from his wife Sue, as he worked full-time as a computer programmer. He directed Yad Chessed until the summer of 2012 when he became a member of its Board of Directors.…

On Yom Kippur, October 9, 1943, in the middle of the Holocaust, Rabbi Walter Wurzburger gave a sermon at Congregation Chai Odom in Brighton, Massachusetts entitled “The Individual in the Crisis.” He argued that Jews in Greater Boston own moral responsibility for the Holocaust. On the basis of the High Priest’s avodah service, Rabbi Wurzburger offer…

In 1992, then 25-year-old Sinéad O'Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live. She was a budding international musical superstar with two chart-topping records to her name. And, unbeknownst to producers, she had decided to use her platform to protest rampant child abuse in the Catholic Church. At the end of her performance, she stared straight into the…

Often music reflects the mood of the time we are in. That is the case with Megillat Esther – but in a surprising way. While we are chanting in a joyous musical mode, reflected in the trope of Purim, we suddenly hear two mournful tunes at several points during the Megillah reading. There are six verses that we sing to this mournful trope, the trope …

Has this ever happened to you? One frigid morning, I grab my warmest jacket. I reach down to zip the zipper and it won’t budge. I pull. I push. I take it apart. I put it back. I pull again. I’m late. I’m from California – I need this coat to zip. Now there are probably more rational things to have done, but I do not do them. I pull with all my stre…

I was out having a coffee last week with a friend. In our musings about the vagaries of life, the phrase, “If only” come up in conversation. How would our lives be different “if only?” Would they be better? Worse? If only we had done this and not that, or NOT done this or that? Our micro and macro decisions effect not only the trajectory of our liv…

February 8, 2025

What is the greatest miracle in Jewish history? Many would answer it is the one we read about this Shabbat – the splitting of the sea. Rarely, though, do we stop to notice another, perhaps equally astounding, miracle that happened when our ancestors reached the shore – they all broke out into song together. How did this happen? What did it look lik…

February 1, 2025

There is a fascinating paradox at the core of human experience: we know what is required to live healthy, happy lives and yet, we often make choices that directly contradict our own well-being. This is well-documented. For example, the consequences of smoking cigarettes have been studied intensively, and the results of those studies have been widel…

Shimon The Righteous would say that the world stands upon three things: upon Torah, upon Avodah - the Temple Service, and upon G’milut Hasadim - acts of loving kindness. Since I am finishing my fifth month working with the teen community here at Temple Emanuel I thought that I would humbly reflect upon three stories that illustrate these three pill…

If you have not already done so, please take a couple of moments to watch this clip of the most famous part of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at a prayer service this past Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, at the Washington National Cathedral. In class we will watch this clip together before our study and conversation. Here are some que…

For 469 days, ever since October 7, every morning, and every evening, at our daily minyan, we pray for the IDF, that God should guard and protect Israel’s courageous and heroic soldiers. We pray that God return our hostages safely to their families. We say Mourner’s Kaddish as a community, as part of am Yisrael, for Israel’s fallen soldiers. Occasi…

This week we begin the Exodus story which offers humanity a one-two punch.First, a cruel new Pharaoh who demonizes a vulnerable and marginalized minority and commands “all his people, saying: Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” Exodus 1-22. In other words, baby-killing is state policy. Infanticide is the …

There is a new form of loss in the world, and it is spreading like wildfire. We know what it is like to lose a person we love. Our mother dies. Our father dies. Our grandparent or sibling or friend dies. There is a Hebrew word for that, and it comes from the Joseph story. After the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, older brother Reuben observes ha…

How is it with your soul?In her book on evangelical Christianity, Circle of Hope, Eliza Griswold shares the centrality of that question in helping people understand one another. How is it with your soul?Do I wake up angry and aggrieved, and spend my energy honking the horn, sending flaming emails, taking offense, looking for a fight?Do I wake up fe…

January 4, 2025

Earlier in the year, Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about her father's friend who was kidnapped at knife-point 50 years ago. It was a powerful piece--both for the thoughtful discussion of this original trauma and its impact on her and on her family friend. But the real story wasn't the kidnapping, nor the way the kidnapping re-ignited memories of her …

One of the most magnetic moments drawing us to shul is the observance of a yahrtzeit, the anniversary of our loved one’s passing, which offers us a precious opportunity to show up again for our beloved departed, to say a few words about them, and to recite Kaddish in their memory. Ordinary people who do not show up at shul all that much the rest of…

I have a thought experiment for you. In honor of Hanukkah, which begins Wednesday night, find a photograph of you lighting Hanukkah candles with your family from 25 years ago. Take a good long look at that old photo. How does it make you feel? For many of us, it can be complicated.On the one hand, there is a certain wistful beauty to it. Our childr…

Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine, and all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (Genesis 41: 29-30)Truer words were never spoken. Joseph’s interpretation of how lean years swallow up fat years, how bad times swallow up good times, how seventy ye…

The volume of outrage in our world has hit a crescendo. All the time I hear questions like, “how can you bear to be around someone who voted like that?!” or “how can you stand working with people who are so anti-Zionist or who are so pro-Israel?” As if people who do not rage against those they disagree with are somehow condoning or supporting evil …

The murder last week of CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York in broad daylight inspired large-scale celebration. The article from the Times and social media posts show delight in his murder; the celebration of his murderer as a hero.What is wrong with us? How could thousands of Americans celebrate murder? There is an ugliness and hate in o…

On a Tuesday in late October, 2022, Jared Goff, a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, was summoned to a meeting in the office of his coach Dan Campbell. The summons gave Jared Goff a pit in his stomach. He figured he was going to be benched or released—fired. Some version of bad news felt inevitable. Goff had begun his career with the Los Angeles Ra…

Is everything going to be okay? We live with that question every day.Is everything going to be okay with Israel? December 7, marks 14 months of war, and the situation is still murky, unresolved and painful for all. This week when he was in dialogue with Michelle, Donniel Hartman was real, and real was not upbeat.Is everything going to be okay with …

Listen to a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend sermon with Rabbi Michelle Robinson

Last week, I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine. Kim Tingley, in her article “‘Nature’s Swiss Army Knife’: What can we Learn from Venom ?” writes about the incredible potential of highly toxic reptile and insect venom to provide pharmaceutical miracles. It turns out that reptile and inspect venom contains hundreds, eve…

Dear friends,There is a fascinating paradox in our Torah reading this week.On the one hand, we've spent these last weeks reading about the trials and tribulations of our ancestors. In our Talmud class, we've discussed how loss, trauma, and pain shape their lives. We've seen how they suffer from dislocation, dashed hopes, and painful interpersonal d…

What does Naftali Herstik, a pre-eminent cantor at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem for 30 years, have in common with Bobby Allison, who was one of the greatest race car drivers in American history, who won 85 NASCAR races over 30 years? One is an all-time great cantor. The other is an all-time great race car driver. They both recently passed away.…

We are plumb in the middle of two of the hardest stories in the Torah. Genesis 16:1-16 tells of Sarai’s continued inability to get pregnant, which leads her to assign her servant Hagar (literally the stranger) to Abram so that she might conceive a child with Abram who would somehow be reckoned as Sarai’s child. When Abram and Hagar have relations, …

I have a friend who is a therapist. She tells the story that once, she had someone in her office who was really struggling. As he shared story after story of misfortune and sorrow, she found herself thinking, “oy, he really needs a therapist.” Then, the patient paused and asked her for her wisdom. “Oh no,” she thought, “I am that therapist.” I’ve n…

A consequential week, in America and in Israel. How can Torah help us become better versions of ourselves? How can Torah help us become better citizens here and better lovers and supporters of Israel? This week we begin the Abraham story.Why Abraham? Why did God pick him? We know that God picked him, but we have no idea as to why. In his essay A Pa…

On the morning of Kol Nidrei—Friday, October 11 to be exact—my colleagues and I were doing a Kabbalat Shabbat service with our youngest learners, our preschool children who range in age from 15 months to 5 years old. Yom Kippur was in the air. Kol Nidrei with all its solemnity, was in 9 hours. How to convey Kol Nidrei intensity to our youngest lear…

The biblical character Lot presents a unique challenge. He appears in three portions, Noach this week, Lekh L’kha next week, and Va-yera two weeks from now. He is a supporting actor in multiple chapters in Genesis: chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, and 19.And yet no one ever talks about him. We don’t mine his story. We avoid him.There is good reason why we …

The question always is, what’s next? And the answer is, let’s be together. What’s next? This is a question that weighs on me in every facet of my life. My son Avishai, who many of you know well after his many years at Hebrew school here and around at services, for a long time would have the same question for us when we first woke up. “What’s for di…

How are we to understand the death of the leader of Hamas, and the mastermind and architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar? Does his death mean that an end to the war, and the beginning of the day after, is closer? Or should Israel’s military continue the fight? What will Sinwar’s death mean for our hostages? These questions are hugely important and ab…