Yom Kippur Day Sermon
Be still, my soul, the Psalmist sings. Isn’t that soothing? Isn’t that what the current moment cries out for?
Be still, my soul, the Psalmist sings. Isn’t that soothing? Isn’t that what the current moment cries out for?
The human family. All of us. Remember that idea?
There’s a joke floating around the Internet, which I cannot take credit for but I am happy to share: ‘The question no job applicants in 2015 ever got right was, ‘so, where do you see yourself in five years?’’
He gripped his little brother’s hand, his stomach churning with fear and embarrassment, his fingers slick with his own sweat. He didn’t dare look at him; the lids of his eyes weighed down by shame and grief, for he knew what was yet to come.
The stars in the sky shone brightly and clearly and I could point out Orion and the Big Dipper to my children on our evening walk. The neighborhood was cast in darkness and we picked our way past downed trees and broken branches by the light of the stars and our flashlights.
One possible approach to the notion of exceptionism is to do something that we Jews are so very good at: love critically.
They locked eyes in the darkness and he could faintly make out the contours of her face. Her brown skin, a muted warm glow, framed by her dark tresses and red veil; all colors bled of their vibrancy by the pallid moonlight.
There’s a Dutch saying ‘er op of er onder!’, which translates literally as ‘on top of it or underneath’, meaning that we will either succeed gloriously or fail spectacularly but we need to give it everything we’ve got because the time is now.
The cruelty and mystery of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:1 cannot be understated. Embedded among cultic taboos circumscribing forbidden intimate relations in Parashat Acharei Mot, and juxtaposed with verses exhorting ethical conduct in K’doshim, stands the prohibition against ‘offering up offspring to Molekh’.