THE PLAGUE OF DARKNESS

It is a time of upheaval, of massive shifts in the world order.  Large numbers of refugees are moving between the great economies, and tides of violence and civil unrest wash across kingdoms and nations.   Inside the largest nation, the people do not know who to trust and they don’t seem to trust each other.   Some blame the current leadership for overreach and stubborn power while others blame the opposition for stirring up people in protest and in hopes of a new order.   And even among the various groups there is growing tension of the erosion of trust and people are pushed to take a side because things seem to be moving too fast to really understand what is happening or what is useful to do.  And then there is a blackout.

These are the events described in this week’s Torah portion, Bo.  While we and Cecile B. DeMille might read this as a simple morality tale between the Israelites who are oppressed and the Egyptians who are doing the oppressing, the story is much more complex.

Parashat Shemot January 9, 2026

  This week is the Yahrzeit of one of the greatest rabbis and theologians of the modern era.   Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Warsaw in 1907 to a well-respected Hassidic rabbinic family.  He received an excellent traditional yeshiva education, but he then pursued his doctorate at the University of Berlin and rabbinic ordination at the new Reform seminary, the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Frankfurt.  .   Despite Nazi limitations on Jews studying in German universities, he managed to complete his studies before being arrested by the Gestapo in 1938 and deported to Poland. Six weeks before the German invasion of Poland, Heschel fled Warsaw for London with the help of Julian Morgenstern, president of Hebrew Union College, and Alexander Guttmann, an eventual colleague at the Hebrew Union College, who secretly re-wrote Heschel's ordination certificate to meet American visa requirements. Heschel arrived in New York City in March 1940. He soon moved to Cincinnati to be on the faculty of Hebrew Union College (HUC) for five years. In 1946 he returned to New York, taking a position with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) where he taught Jewish ethics and Mysticism until his death in 1972. 

Parashat Vayigash  Dec 26, 2025 

The Joseph story is among the longest independent narratives in Genesis or the Torah.  Like the story of Jacob, Joseph’s father,  it is a complex novella of a story complete with fratricide, prison, court intrigue, lust, a national crisis, seizing and nationalizing land, and, oh yes, reconciliation.   It would be one of the great feel-good stories in the Bible if you forget for a moment that what feels good in this story ends up with the Jews enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years.  The Bible is like that:  the best endings are quite temporary and often set the state for the disaster that is already on its way, but the people didn’t know it yet.

Parashat Noah

RIGHTEOUS IN HIS GENERATION

Ori, your portion is  a famous one, about Noah and the ark and the Tower of Babel.  One thing we haven’t talked much about while we worked on your d’var was Noah himself.    The Torah tells us that Noah was a good person, and was “tamim b’dorotav”   which means “innocent in his generation,”  or “righteous in his age.”  

The odd phrase “righteous in his age” was like candy for the ancient rabbis.  What do they mean, “in his age?”  Would he not be righteous in a different age? ou shall not enter it.”  

Parashat Noah

RIGHTEOUS IN HIS GENERATION

Ori, your portion is  a famous one, about Noah and the ark and the Tower of Babel.  One thing we haven’t talked much about while we worked on your d’var was Noah himself.    The Torah tells us that Noah was a good person, and was “tamim b’dorotav”   which means “innocent in his generation,”  or “righteous in his age.”  

The odd phrase “righteous in his age” was like candy for the ancient rabbis.  What do they mean, “in his age?”  Would he not be righteous in a different age? ou shall not enter it.”  

Parashat Noah

RIGHTEOUS IN HIS GENERATION

Ori, your portion is  a famous one, about Noah and the ark and the Tower of Babel.  One thing we haven’t talked much about while we worked on your d’var was Noah himself.    The Torah tells us that Noah was a good person, and was “tamim b’dorotav”   which means “innocent in his generation,”  or “righteous in his age.”  

The odd phrase “righteous in his age” was like candy for the ancient rabbis.  What do they mean, “in his age?”  Would he not be righteous in a different age? ou shall not enter it.”  

Parashat Haazinu

At the end of this week’s portion, Haazinu,  the next to the last portion in the Torah, we read about Moses’ impending death:  

That very day יהוה spoke to Moses:

Ascend these heights of Abarim to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites as their holding.

You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend, and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin;

for you both broke faith with Me among the Israelite people, at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to uphold My sanctity among the Israelite people.

You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it—the land that I am giving to the Israelite people.  (Deuteronomy 32:48-52)

“You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it.”  

Yom Kippur Morning 5786

THE CHALLENGE OF JONAH

Last night, I ended my remarks with something Rachel Goldberg-Polin pointed out recently.  She said that the rabbis tell us that change, that salvation can come in the blink of an eye, k’heref ayin.  She said that this idea gave her great comfort and hope as she has dealt with her son being held captive in Gaza and then murdered.  She said that when approaching this very difficult new year that idea gave her hope.  May it also give us hope.

This year, in the season of our High Holy Days, we have been subjected to a theater of the absurd at the Emmy’s.  At the UN, we’ve been subjected to moralizing speeches from countries hectoring Israel while themselves funding deadly terror attacks on civilians in Gaza, Yemen, and also in the enormous humanitarian crises in Nigeria and Sudan.

Kol Nidrei

GIVE ME ONE GOOD PRAYER

God Give me just one good prayer

That opens the gates everywhere

Give me just one honest word

That will leave me without a breath of air

The storm’s all around, I’m hanging by a thread,

I cry out to You with all my strength

My soul is in your keep

How can you be asleep?

Come rescue me.

Rosh HaShanah Morning

ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD

In April of last year, my hardcopy of The Atlantic arrived with these words splashed across the cover:   “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.”

The subtitle was, “ Anti-Semitism on the right and the left threatens to bring to a close an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans—and demolish the liberal order they helped establish.”

It was a long article by journalist Franklin Foer who made the case that the post-war America I and my parents came of age in was a golden age.  It was a time when public antisemitism was largely taboo, in which Jews enrolled in unprecedented numbers to Ivy League and other top universities.  It was a time when Jew’s prominence in society was far greater than our numbers.

 …It was a Jewish world that he argues is now profoundly threatened.   With the current convergence of antisemitism from both the left and the right, with danger rising, and with more and more Jews feeling a need to hide their identity in public, Foer believes this age is ending.  I know I’ve heard that in some way from many of you.  We’ve felt it.  

Then, a couple of weeks ago,  Sarah Hurwitz’s new book, “AS A JEW” came out.  She had a very different read of the past decades….

Erev Rosh HaShanah

Hatikvah

Last year at the High Holy Days,  our theme was “There is nothing as whole as a broken heart.”   This Hassidic teaching from the Kotzker Rebbe seem fitting for a year when our hearts were shattered by the events of October 7 and even more by the events of October 8 when the tsunami of Jew-hatred poured out while terrorists were still killing people in Israel and Israel would not be going into Gaza for weeks.  We were afraid, disoriented, and heartbroken at the loss of life and the scale of destruction.

This year, I thought in my immense wisdom, that it was time to focus on resilience and to look toward renewal and a future of hope.

PARASHAT  KI TEITZEI / VERMONT PRIDE SHABBAT

The other night,  I was working on this service handout while Tim was watching his reality TV program du jour,  THE CHALLENGE ALL-STARS RIVALS.    In this season, the contestants have to work in pairs of rivals, and one pair were named “Adam and Steve.”  As I’m sitting there deep in formatting this service handout, I kept hearing “Adam and Steve,” over and over, and it started to irritate me.   It took me a second but then it hit me:  it was the old  protest signs against gay marriage: “Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve.”  Remember those? 

Parashat Shoftim 

I have talked often about Lecha Dodi, and this week’s Haftarah reading from Isaiah 51-2 happens to include some of the key sources for the verses,  I thought it might be good tonight to look at a few of the many sources for Lecha Dodi.   You should have a sheet with these sources (or it is included below)

I want to start at the beginning.   The words “Lecha Dodi” are from one of the most beautiful passages of Song of Songs

Parshat Re’eh

Have you ever thought about why we often use the verb “practice” when we talk about faith and faith traditions.  We say we practice this faith or this discipline.   What do we mean by that?   Rabbi David Niven asked that question when teaching about this week’s Torah portion. 

Parshat Ve’etchanan

As I said last night, I went to a huge Jewish music concert Thursday night in Bethel, New York, a sort of Jewstock.   It was great music, full of Jewish joy and a sense of peoplehood, but it was overwhelmingly Orthodox.  While most of those attending were women, including probably 2,000 from girls summer camps, I couldn’t help but notice that there were no women on stage because there are still rules in large parts of the Orthodox world that don’t allow women to sing in front of men.

Parshat D’varim

We are in the Hebrew month of Av, and this Saturday night and Sunday will be the 9th of Av, Tisha b’Av.  Traditionally, it is a day of fasting and mourning that commemorates that begins as a yearly commemoration of the day Rome destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, but that has come to be associated with the destruction of the first Temple, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Nazi’s final solution.   It is traditional to gather late at night, and sing laments and chant the Book of Eicha, Lamentations.  We have done that most years since I’ve been here.

But honestly, Reform Jews haven’t really embraced this day, in large part because we don’t so much mourn the loss of the temple and don’t want to go back to that form of Judaism.  Indeed, much of what we call Judaism today emerges out of that very destruction and from the reaction of the early rabbis to that loss.  Mourning the temple is not really our brand. 

Parshat Mattot Massei

These past few weeks, if you have not been a-snooze, you probably saw that the Druze and the Jews have been in the news, so I thought it might be helpful if I shared some information about who the Druze are and try to explain why there is such a close emotional connection between these two communities in the Middle East. 

Parshat Naso

…”But perhaps the most important life lesson in Pirkei Avot is almost hidden.  It doesn’t read like an ethical or moral teaching at all.   Here it is:

משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי, וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים, וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה.

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets transmitted it to the Scholars of the Great Assembly.

Not the most exciting opening, perhaps, but hidden in plain sight is a profound lesson:  the need to pass on our traditions to the next generation.  This unbroken chain of tradition through the generations, in Hebrew, the Dorot,  is one of the great strengths of the Jewish people, and given our difficult history, it is, I think, a miracle that our tradition has not only been passed down through the generations but it has continued to deepen, to evolve, to adapt and to grow.  Each generation must make it their own and find a way to pass it on to the next one.  As anyone who has taught Hebrew School knows, this is not so easy to do.“

Shavuot Sermon

THE PROFOUND IF BORING WISDOM OF JEWISH TRADITION:   RULE OF LAW

Rule.   Of.   Law. 

These three words rarely conjure up a deep sense of holiness, or spirituality, but these three words sum up what is perhaps the most profound wisdom of our tradition.  

Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, and while there is much drama in the description of lightning and thunder and blasts of the shofar, matan Torah, the giving of the Torah boils down to God’s demanding that we live under the rule of law. 

Parshat Bamidbar

This week, we leave the book of Leviticus (whew) and we begin the book of Numbers. 

In Hebrew,  it is called “BaMidbar”  or “in the wilderness.”   In the Jewish conception, “the wilderness” is not some pristine forest;  it is a dry desert mountainous area where it is very difficult to know where you are or where you are going.   What you do know is that you are definitely not where you have been.   It seems appropriate for the times we are living in.   

In Hebrew numerology, Bamidbar equals 248, which is also what the name “Abraham” equals.  Abraham also left what he had known and travels through a wilderness before finally reaching his new home.  These days, we are all Abraham.