Yom Kippur, Oct 12, 2024

For the past 47 years, that purpose has been my north star....my primary identity, my work, and my purpose on this earth has been to teach Judaism.  Now what? That question is both terrifying and exhilarating. I feel an empty space opening at the center of my life. An empty space that is alive with possibility, and with uncertainty. 

Yom Kippur Oct 11, 2024

here is a new updated Shabbat chuppah, a simple and humble Shabbat structure for this Jewish community, the holy congregation of Santa Barbara.  Our four poles are still:  A Shabbat tablecloth, a Shabbat delicacy, a Shabbat garment, and the simplest possible Shabbat ritual of lighting two candles.  And over those four chuppah poles let us spread a canopy of time with loving friends.

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.

August 30, 2024

We rabbis, and some of our congregants, would like to set God at the center of our lives.  We understand from all of our sources that for a Jew, God is fundamental, central and unavoidable.  And yet, and this is the crux of the challenge: the ultimate reality of God is utterly impenetrable and mysterious....  Most of us cannot begin to comprehend the physical structures of our universe.  How can we hope to say anything meaningful about the creative source which brought that universe into being?

Friday, August 9, 2024

This year on Sunday October 6 .....we will gather together to gaze into the eyes of our lost family members, share their food, read their stories, and to remember who they were.  And at the end of our meal of remembrance and consolation we will declare, with all Jewish people everywhere:

“V’atem hadevekim b’Adonai eloheichem chayim kulchem hayom.”  And you, who cling to Adonai your God are all alive today.

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 23, 2023

it rarely works to begin a story by speaking a name of God. In my experience, it is best to begin with a human story. To awaken memory and imagination, with colors and sounds, tastes and smells. People we have known, a place we have been, words we have sung, emotions we felt, long ago but which remain in our bodies…ready to be brought back to mind. And then, having arrived at the palace of memory and imagination, to give it a name. Singer of the blue-black night; Loving Teacher of Israel, Life and Death Dancer.

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.

Yom Kippur 2023

God is asking us a question:  “is compassion possible?”   It’s not an argument.  Not a demand.  Just a question.  “Are you open to the possibility of compassion?”  And if the answer is “yes, maybe”….then having heard and confronted Jonah’s pessimism, we can go back to Isaiah’s mountaintop and end the day with Isaiah’s vision:  “Share your bread with the hungry.  Bring the brokenhearted into your home.  Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will arise quickly.  Then when you call, God will answer; when you cry out, God will say “Hineni.”  “Here I am.” 

July 14, 2023

if we hope to grow, just like Renee Fleming’s students on the stage in Aspen, we  need first to allow the walls of our ego to be torn down.  Those students were so brave, stepping out on that stage, knowing that this great opera singer was about to criticize them.  She did it with great kindness, but she breached their walls.  She forced them to grow, in front of us all.

June 9, 2023

Today, as our nation celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride Month, there are many people who, like me, grew up not knowing a single openly gay person. We are the generation born in slavery, and many of my generation, like our ancestors standing on the border of the land of the future, are longing for the past. It is a deeply human, completely understandable, natural impulse….this longing for Egypt. 

June 2, 2023

The house we are building together is an invisible, spiritual structure, built of friendships, and memories, shared grief and celebrations, deep learning and thousands upon thousands upon thousands of acts of kindness and connections between one soul and another.  That is the house of living Judaism that we are building together.