Sermons
A Torah of Love (Valentine’s Day Sermonette)
To be honest, I don’t care much for a commercially-driven Hallmark holiday that I don’t celebrate but I am passionate about love. Here’s why.
Between The (Head)lines
Like many of you, I’ve been following the headlines about the Coronavirus outbreak. While I leave assessments of this new virus to the epidemiologists and public health experts, I think we can glean meaningful insights about our moral responses by reading between the headlines.
On Holy Ground
I love that feeling of sinking my boots into virgin snow, leaving freshly made footprints. There is a quietude to fresh snow that is magnificent and spiritually resonant; like the Shekhinah has draped Herself in a fine tallit.
Finishing Well
Now that the chanukkiyot are packed away, the candlewax has been scraped from window sills, the dinners, the Season’s post cards, the gift wrappings, champagne corks and fireworks are behind us, what we have left to reflect on are not only our expanded waistlines but the family relationships we built during the winter Holiday Season.
Vision and Light
There are no shortage of Biblical verses that speak to the present moment, but this verse, ‘without vision, the people are confused’ (or ‘perish’ in other translations) seems particularly salient.
The Hearts of Parents and Children
The portion opens with a crisis: Isaac marries Rebecca and they, like Abraham and Sarah, are confronted with infertility. It only takes three verses to paint a complete picture of their marriage, their challenges and their much-wanted pregnancy.
The American Sabbath
It’s not just the tryptophan in the turkey; there is an unmistakable mellowness to a Thanksgiving dinner that feels Shabbosdik: where people take the time to relax, talk, eat and savor the company of loved ones. Not only that, it is one of the few American holidays where this country – of incessant consumption and entrepreneurism – shuts down, in the best possible way.
Salt and Ice
My oldest and I have had several philosophical conversations on the nature of ‘truth’: he asks me whether fairytales are real, and I have responded to him that things may not be real – as in factual and empirical – but can still be true – as in the values they hold and the ideas they drive.
The Moral High Ground
What does it mean for us to map the ‘terrain of the soul’? What can we learn from these symbolic geographies of Canaan and Sodom?
The Embodied Experience
This is the last sermon I will give before I cycle off for my maternity leave and so I’m taking my chance by making it a little more personal and I hope you will forgive me for doing so.
