Rosh Hashanah 2024

Seder means “order.”  Tonight I would like to take us through a new version of the old Rosh HaShanah seder, weaving together symbolic foods and questions, to tell the story of the turbulent year that has just ended, and to express our hopes and prayers for the new year being born right now.  With this Rosh Hashanah seder, perhaps we may create a tiny bit of order amid the chaos of events swirling all around us.

May 10, 2024

During the past one hundred years of Jewish history, our people have been attempting to carry out this holiness revolution in our ancient homeland, the land of Israel. God knows and we know that it has been far from perfect, but this is the meaning of Zionism as I understand it. The Jewish people…which includes all of us….is attempting to create a just and compassionate society in the land of our ancestors.

February 9, 2024

Our sisters from Israel came to us, across a vast distance, and with their powerful voices, opening to us their broken hearts, they brought us together. Now, after October 7th, more than ever, we know that Israel is the living, beating heart of our people. Now we are family, bound together in grief and in joy, the Jews of Santa Barbara and the Jews of Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

January 19, 2024

In our Jewish memory, we have stored up both immeasurable pain and also infinite tenderness, beauty and grace.   One dark night in Egypt, over three thousand years ago, we heard the terrible, unforgettable cry of suffering innocents and in the very same instant, a nation of loving parents and children, question askers and storytellers, began to be born.  May we allow our own hearts to expand, to acknowledge all of the brokenness and all of the beauty of this our only world. 

December 8, 2023

Our emotions grow and spread.  V’yosifu.  V’yosifu.  Even more.  Even more.  We know this.  This story is for us, right now.  We are living in a time of rapidly spreading anger and fear and hatred.  In Israel, in Gaza, on our university campuses, on our television screens, on the internet.  V’yosifu, v'yosifu.  Even more.  Even more.

Tuesday November 21, 2023

            An old Jewish teaching observes that “When senseless hatred reigns on earth, and human beings hide their faces from one another, then heaven is forced to hide its face.  But when love comes to rule the earth, and human beings reveal their faces to one another, then the splendor of God will be revealed.”

October 27, 2023

we are living through profoundly dangerous times.  The events that we are witnessing and are actually part of, will change our world irrevocably, in ways we cannot anticipate or imagine. But we do know that we are stronger, wiser and more courageous when we work together with each other.

October 7, 2023

      Twenty four hours later, we have come back to the same spot ….together with leaders and members of our entire Santa Barbara Jewish Community….and our hearts are bursting with a different set of emotions.  Fear.  Grief.  Anger.  Even hatred.  So much has changed, overnight.

April 21, 2023

April is the month in which we grapple as a people with our history, both ancient and recent. In April, we face the consequences of what it has meant and what it means for each of us today to say “we Jews.”

April 24, 2020

This is our family, in Israel, living through the coronavirus. The tiny baby in her flat in Tel Aviv, dreaming and her parents longing for their families. Yishay Ribo, singing for us to the entire world, ancient questions out of our tradition that have come back to life, in our day. What is God teaching us? How do we come back together, and when? And the children of Kibbutz Gezer, singing and dancing with their popsicles on a hot corona day.

Rosh Hashanah 2014

Israelis are nothing if not direct and utterly real, but sadly most organized tours tend to turn Israel into a Jewish Disneyland.   It’s easier, much easier, to drive folks from archeological site to museum, then to some awesome natural beauty and finally to go shopping for souvenirs, than to set up meetings with real people, who have personalities and opinions, and who may or may not show up, and you never know what they will say.  And many tours skip right over the horrible messiness of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which can almost be avoided as long as you don’t talk to any people.  But I wanted to embrace the messiness.

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.

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.

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?

December 29, 2006

Ten measures of suffering fell upon the world, taught the ancient sages, and nine of those fell upon Jerusalem.  Ten measures of beauty fell upon the world, taught the sages, and nine of those fell upon Jerusalem.  I wouldn’t want my daughter to be spending her nineteenth year in any other city in the world.