On baseball and prayer
I’ve been waiting my whole career to start a D’var Torah with a reference to baseball.
Bugs in My Kale: Bringing Intention to Our Tabletop
How are we connected to the food we eat? Imagine a movement that links consumption and production, shoppers and workers, in Professor Bryant Simon’s discussion: The Dinner Party, this Sunday 10/13, 10:15am at RS. (A part of the What is Your Food Worth partnership with the Feinstein Center). Below is...
Coloring in Creation
In the spring of my senior year of high school, after the stress of college applications and acceptance were over, my best friend and I both had the overwhelming urge to…color. We went to the drugstore and bought a brand-new 64 pack of Crayola crayons and a couple of those...
The Liberation of False Memory: Cantor Frankel’s Yizkor Sermon 5774
Remember. It’s one of our first Jewish lessons. It’s in the Ten Commandments, it’s in the poem L’cha Dodi with which we greet Shabbat each week, and it’s repeated throughout the liturgy of these High Holy Days. In our worship on Rosh HaShanah, the sound of the shofar awakens us...
Sukkot: The Illusion of Shelter
Why do we build a shelter that provides no shelter at all? Growing up in suburban NJ, my home was not in a high-crime area. Yet, always, we locked the doors and we turned on the security alarm. We even had a big dog bowl on the front porch, to...
We Were Strangers, Too: Yom Kippur Sermon on Immigration Reform
A few years ago, while celebrating Shabbat with our preschool students, I was teaching the Jewish value of welcoming the stranger. Thinking that I was encouraging the young children to be kind to a new student, I asked them, what do you think the Torah tells us to do when...
We’re All In This Thing Together (Rabbi Freedman’s Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon)
In an episode of the TV sitcom “Friends,” entitled “The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS,” two characters, Phoebe and Joey, engage in a contest based on the theories of philosopher Immanuel Kant. Is there such a thing as a truly unselfish act, they wonder, one in which someone benefits while...
September 11, Honoring the Memory
Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of...
Awake My Soul–All of Elul has been directed to this moment
This whole summer, each Shabbat, we have been talking about Judaism’s relevance. Judaism is all around us. We can become attuned to it, and we can learn Jewishly from the stories in the news, the conversations we have with our loved ones and co-workers, the experiences we encounter in our...
Elul Reflections: What Do I Want?
Our lives are full of “should”s. I should go to the grocery store. I should make that appointment I’ve been avoiding. I should ignore the beautiful weather outside and finish my work to meet this deadline. What if we were to consider this coming year full of “want”s? I want...