Ahz mah (So what)

When I was in fifth grade, my friend K beat me up. I say she beat me up, because that was the expression in those days. It was actually a series of incidents over perhaps a week or two. An angry shove when the teacher’s back was turned, another shove down the stairs on the way to gym; and then finally, in the hallway after school, hair-pulling and punches in the stomach. I stood there, baffled and afraid, taking the blows. “Stop it,” I said. “Stop it,” she mimicked. Another friend came over and hugged me, making herself into a shield. K just punched her in the back instead. Eventually, K must have walked away; I don’t remember how it ended. I do remember that no adult saw or intervened, and no child in the crowded hallway thought to seek an adult’s assistance. We were in our own world. Fifth grade. Click here for complete sermon

 We stand within the community on Yom Kippur and confess the many ways we have fallen short of our own moral expectations. We even have an old custom of hitting ourselves over and over during the “ahl cheits,” the communal recitation of our sins. How many of you learned that tradition growing up? Tonight I want to talk about how to stop hitting ourselves. Click here for complete sermon

My father died nine years ago. Some years after he died, my mother emptied his Brooks Brothers pajamas out of the top drawer of his dresser to make space for a few of her things. Other than that, the dresser remained untouched. Mom eventually moved out of the house to an apartment in our hometown, and then two years ago moved up here to Sharon. My father’s untouched dresser went with her for both moves. When my mother died this past June and I was faced with the task of clearing out her apartment, I began with my father’s dresser. Among the treasures (and junk) I unearthed in that dresser was a large, obviously old, manila envelope. Within the envelope I found a checkbook, a savings bank passbook, a bank statement, a high school report card, a high school diploma, a birth certificate, a teen worker’s permit, a tattered New York marriage license, an employee identification card. Here, in one envelope, along with a handful of photos found in another dresser drawer, are all the artifac...

A kitchen table memory: I am eight years old. I am alone at the kitchen table, poking at the cold remains of dinner on my plate. My father and brother have already eaten and gone. My mother is at the sink doing dishes, her back to me. I have been told to sit alone for as long as it will take to finish the cold remains of dinner on my plate. I have been told that I am a “slow eater.” I have been told that I talk too much during meals. The brown formica-top kitchen table my parents purchased after their marriage in 1952, used as a kitchen table until my mother’s death this past June, is now the work table in my home office. Inheriting this kitchen table and re-purposing it in our home is affecting me in ways I could not have imagined. Click here for complete sermon

Our families are where we do our deepest learning, for better and for worse. Who we are and what we do are shaped by our earliest experiences at home. And even into adulthood, our families influence who we are and what we do. The soul work of spiritual growth must therefore, inevitably, bring us face to face with our family and our family’s “baggage.” The creator(s) of the Torah understood this truth. It is no coincidence that the formative stories of the Jewish people are family stories. Look at the two dramatic stories traditionally recited on Rosh Hashanah – Abraham’s expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, and Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac. Two highly charged tales of near infanticide! (Not familiar with these stories? Check out Genesis ch. 21 and 22.) Since my mother’s death this June, I have been sorting through many memories as they bubble up. There is something about the mourning period that allows for a heightened awareness of the power of memory, and in some cases the p...

I want to tell you about a Jewish hero of mine. Her name is Maya Paley, and you’ve probably never heard of her. Maya Paley is a young Jewish woman living in Los Angeles. In 2010, when she was 27 years old, she worked in Israel on a social justice fellowship, researching the plight of the more than 60,000 African asylum seekers currently living in a state of limbo in Israel. These refugees are caught in a legal Catch-22 in which they are often held in detention centers or left to fend for themselves on the streets of Tel Aviv, without legal permission to work or the ability to apply for refugee status. Maya’s experience getting to know some of these refugees touched her heart and ignited her passion for justice. This past summer, back in the U.S., she and her friend Stephen Slater launched a grass-roots effort to raise consciousness about this troubling situation and to press the Israeli government to act justly. Their gutsy, social media-savvy campaign, called Right Now, is already ma...

I wrote this story for my young friends, but I've been asked to share it with adults too: Dear friends, Here is another way to tell the Noah story. See what you think: Once upon a time, long, long ago, in another part of the world, there was a very bad storm. Maybe something like “Super Storm Sandy” that happened here in October 2012! It rained…       …and it rained…            …and it rained! The rivers and lakes flooded, and a lot of people who lived near the rivers and lakes were killed by the flooding. Now the people living there did not know how big the world really was, so it seemed to them that the whole earth was being flooded.... click here for the complete story