Sermons
One of the strangest, most difficult and at times most exciting responsibilities of being a rabbi is preparing and delivering a sermon. It is a strange form of communication, almost completely “one way,” with little opportunity for the congregation to respond or for the rabbi to know how it was received. The blank sheet of paper before beginning to write is so daunting: what should I talk about? What should I say about it? How should I say it? But looking back now over forty years of sermons, I realize that being required to stand up in front of the congregation and open my mouth and speak has forced me to think deeply about my own life, Judaism, and our world. Below are many recent sermons and some of the sermons from the past which capture important moments in my life, or the life of our community or the world.
The Beginnings of Passover
April 5, 2019
in honor of the new moon, I would like to tell you a story tonight that is as close to the truth as I can possibly make it. It is a story that you may have never heard before. It is the story of how Pesach, that is Passover, how Pesach first came to be a festival of the Jewish people.
Tearing our Clothing
Night of Solidarity following the synagogue shooting in Squirrel Hill
October 30, 2018
All of us human beings, when we are in deep grief, have this wild impulse to tear off everything fine and fancy, and to tear down the carefully constructed civilization of our lives. Our ancient, prehistoric gesture of tearing our clothes gives expression to that impulse...and manages it.
Tear this far; then stop. Tear your shirt. Tear your dress. Then stop.
Why We Pray in Hebrew
March 9, 2018
Some Jews walk away from our religion because they just don’t see the point of all the Hebrew. Many. For Jews who take the time and put in the work to learn, Hebrew can be a doorway, leading into a magnificent palace. But for the many Jews who do not know how to read Hebrew, the door is shut. Hebrew is a wall, shutting them out. So why do we pray in Hebrew?
The Mountains Melted Like Wax
After the Montecito Debris Flow
January 12, 2018
In the early, dark hours of the morning last Tuesday, the mountains above Montecito melted like wax, in the geologic phenomenon called a “debris flow,” or what in Japan, they call a “yamatsunami,” a “mountain tsunami.” While those of us living in Goleta and Santa Barbara slept peacefully in our beds, our friends living in Montecito were awakened by a pounding, earth-shattering, house crushing river of mud, boulders, trees, cars, and...heartbreakingly... human bodies pouring down through Montecito. Wherever we were that night, our lives will never be the same.
Rwanda
December 30, 2017
I was only there for five days, but in that short time I took in so many sights, and experiences, and conversations that it will take me many months to process it all. Tonight I want to focus on one aspect of the trip, the question that felt like it was all around me, all the time, and that is “how are the people of Rwanda making sense of their past? How are they remembering and how are they thinking about the genocide, and how are they trying to heal themselves?”
Christmas
December 22, 2017
Here is the crux of the dilemma. The hyper-commercialized Christmas is not a problem; it is not even a little bit tempting, and is easy to reject. But it is the beautiful Christmas, the warmth, the friendship, the good music, a group of neighbors walking and singing together and homemade food. This is the very best that American culture has to offer. Why would we turn inside, and remove ourselves from this moment?
Hamilton and Prayer
Yom Kippur, September 29, 2017
For many of our people, just like for Miranda’s young, scrappy and hungry Alexander Hamilton, prayer has never happened before. We do not even know exactly what prayer is, or how to do it, or whether it is still a meaningful experience in our world. These are my questions tonight, on Yom Kippur, our people’s great night of prayer.
Mt. Hope Cemetery
December 2, 2016
How very fitting that Susan B Anthony and Frederick Douglass are resting nearby each other in a cemetery named Mount Hope.
My Father
Rosh Hashanah 2016
The silence between parents and children has a purpose. A religious significance. As parents, when our children are small, we fill their lives. We teach our children language, stories, songs, religion and culture, we pour ourselves into them. And then a time comes…right around age thirteen…when we parents step back and simply watch and wonder. We invite silence to enter between us and our children. The silence between parent and child becomes a sacred space, a dwelling place for God. A holy of holies.
Calling Santa Barbara Home
March 4, 2016
For thirty years I have lived here in Santa Barbara without curiosity about local history. Without learning the names of the Channel Islands. Without knowing the names of the wildflowers. With no sense that this place might have a claim on me….that I could live here and be at home. Now, my father has died and my mother is talking about moving to Boston, to be close to my sister. Rochester is slipping away from me. If I want a home, somewhere on this earth, it looks like it will have to be Santa Barbara. How do we make a place home?
Eulogy for My Father
October 9, 2015
I doubt that many doctors have spent the night sleeping next to their patients, or researchers spent the night sleeping with the animal subjects of their experiments. But these stories of night-times together reveal my father’s insight, perhaps his most deeply held conviction. My dad knew intuitively and reflected throughout his life and career upon the divine, healing power of personal presence. Of touch, of glance, of voice, of smile and laugh. These were the most important items in our father’s medical bag.
What is Revelation?
May 22, 2015
When those two young people opened up to each other, it was revelation! And when they shared their story with me, in all its strangeness and power, it was revelation again! Our souls can meet, in falling in love, or even just in sharing a story. The story of the volcano, and the thunder and lightning, and the voice of God speaking out of the silence, is all a glorious metaphor for the way that something deep and true can rise up within us and erupt in tears, laughter, and powerful words of truth. This is revelation; this is Torah. It is the best thing about being alive. And it takes courage.
Do Not Covet
February 6, 2015
one question remains unanswered about that tenth commandment: You shall not covet. Can the Torah really command us not to feel something? The other commandments all speak to behavior: do not murder. Do not steal. Rest on the Sabbath. Do not sleep with another person’s spouse. These are all behaviors which we expect ourselves and others to control. But envy is an emotion; bubbling up at times unexpectedly and uncontrollably. We might wish we did not feel envy….but we either do or we do not. You can legislate actions, but can you legislate feelings?
Two Wrestlings
December 5, 2014
This week we read the story of Jacob wrestling all night long with a mysterious man, and in the same week our televisions and computer screens have placed before us devastating video footage of a forty- three year old black man Eric Garner being placed in a chokehold, and wrestled to the ground, to die on a street on Staten Island. Two very different wrestlings fill our minds in this single week.
Israel: Disneyland or Reality?
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.
Gathered Unto His People
September 12, 2014
our Torah simply does not provide a description of the afterlife. But it offers a beautiful phrase to express that a person has died: “He was gathered unto his people.” I do not need or want a doctrine of the afterlife. I will never be ready to pledge allegiance to a belief about where my father is going. But I will be happy to allow my imagination to run free, and to imagine him reunited with his friend Earl, his best friend from childhood, whom he lost so long ago, and Nick and Stan and Jerry and his mentors Paul and John and George and his mother Dora, his father Samuel whom he never met, after whom I am named, and his many aunts and uncles Ida and Alice and Bertha and Ben and Itch and Louie and Charlie…
When he is good and ready, and not before, he will be gathered unto his people; all of those who raised him on Vienna Street, in the old Jewish neighborhood of Rochester, New York.
To Slow Down
August 29, 2014
As Marian and I walked through the mountains, we slowed down and met some new friends…all those wildflowers… and learned their names. This is our people’s old wisdom, contained in the ancient commandment to rest on Shabbat.
Tonight God is calling us, urging us to slow down, asking us “Where are you?” As we enter this season of turning, may we find the quiet to hear that voice, and the strength to turn toward God and to respond: Hineni. Here I am.
Gaza War 2014
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.
The Day of Remembering
Rosh Hashanah 2013
We teach our children that on Rosh Hashanah we look back and review the past year, but honestly, who does that? It’s simply not possible. Way too much has happened over those 365 days, which come to over 6,000 waking hours. 6,000 hours of shopping, cooking, eating, cleaning, emailing, watching television, posting and lurking on Facebook, driving, reading, gardening, waiting in line, worrying, exercising, playing, working….. 6,000 hours….and who can possibly remember and distinguish one hour from the next?
The John Muir Trail
August 30, 2013
Upon returning from 3 weeks in the wilderness
Marian and I went on our own exodus journey. We were far away from all human civilization: no cars, virtually no human structures, no roads….deep, deep into the wilderness….if we had needed to get out, it would have taken us two long days to walk out.