Sermonette: Fringes
There is only so much dissonance the human brain can absorb at any given moment and more wisdom (and rage) may filter through the recesses of our consciousness in days to come.
There is only so much dissonance the human brain can absorb at any given moment and more wisdom (and rage) may filter through the recesses of our consciousness in days to come.
I cannot offer you a nechemta, dear brothers and sisters, dear siblings.
My presence is not a political act; it is a moral stance, an expression of my deepest religious values and a fulfilment of the obligations of Jewish ethics.
Please allow me to start this sermon with oversharing. One of the weirder trivia about me is that I had three children in three different countries.
There is a story in the Talmud about a man and a tree.
‘Feeling like a Passover Pariah? You’re not alone!’ This was the kind of New York Times headline that immediately grabbed my attention.
The meaning of Tazria – of both the woman after childbirth and the ‘metzora’ (the person afflicted by tzara’at, a skin condition affecting the individual) – is the implicit and explicit reality of rest and healing.
Our world has shifted on its axis again and we try to find new footing.
Prayer features very heavily in the Torah but often in ways that feel far removed from our contemporary experience.
Two weeks ago, I had the intention on starting a new sermon series. It was Parashat Bo, and two years – according to the Hebrew calendar, that is – since I had first preached on a ‘novel coronavirus’ that had put a Chinese city in lockdown.