Ahz mah (So what)

Yom Kippur 2014 This has been a painful year. A sometimes frightening, sometimes overwhelming year. A difficult year to be a rational optimist, which is what I like to consider myself. This has been a year of enemies, some with names we have never heard of before, names like ISIS, Boko Haram, Khorasan. On the continuum of hope and despair, this has perhaps been a year with more despair than we have experienced in a long while. And not only for Jews. For people of color in the United States, for example, and for their allies who believe in the American vision of justice, it has been a year of outrage, fear, and at times despair. As I said on Rosh Hashanah: When it feels as if the Dark Side is rising around the world, when it feels as if hatred and violence and cruel injustices are oozing up through every crack of human nature…. The question arises: What can one person do? What can one person do? Today I would like to share with you a wisdom teaching from the early rabbinic master Hill...

Kol Nidrei 2014 About 23 years ago, Alan and I and our then toddler Jacob attended the 60th birthday party of a good friend. After a few hours, as people began saying their goodbyes and leaving the party, we overheard our friend say “Oh, people are leaving. I guess that’s what’s happening now.” Just like that. No judgment, no sadness, no wishing for it to be otherwise. Just “Oh, I guess that’s what’s happening now.” Ever since then, that expression has been a guiding spiritual principle in our family (as well as, on occasion, a source of humor). Our good friend is now in his 80s, and he too continues to try to live by that principle, day by day. Whatever is happening now, that’s what’s happening. Wishing it were otherwise only causes suffering. Of course, being human, we also experience the flip side of that guiding spiritual principle: Whatever is happening now… it could be better! In the Jewish tradition we have a name for these paradoxical impulses: netsach and hod. Click here ...

Rosh Hashanah 2014 Five years ago, at our first Rosh Hashanah as a newly-merged Temple Kol Tikvah, I shared my suggestions for three core values worth cultivating. They might have been entirely forgotten if Randy O’Brien had not thought to immortalize them as a beautiful challah cover: “Love more. Learn more. Fix what’s broken.” In honor of this being Kol Tikvah’s fifth year, I went back to take a look at that very first sermon. Not surprisingly, I have a different perspective than I did five years ago. (And I hope that I will have yet another perspective five years from now!) This year, I am drawn to focus on the “fix what’s broken,” and in a different way than I did five years ago. As many of you know, this past February I went on a 10-day tour of Rwanda to witness some of the peace-building efforts that have been evolving there since the Tutsi genocide 20 years ago. It was a mind-blowing journey. I shared some of my reflections on my blog, and also gave a presentation in May...

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2014 This summer, I added my maiden name to my Facebook name. I wanted to post something on a “chitchat” page for people from my home town in New Jersey, and I knew that no one would recognize me by the name Kafka. A week or so later, I received a Facebook message from a man living in New York State. He wrote: “Dear Randy, over these many years since high school, you have popped into my mind more than a few times... click here to read the complete sermon