Episodes
Tuesday Oct 26, 2021
The Potentially Limitless Commandment of Honoring Parents As They Age
Tuesday Oct 26, 2021
Tuesday Oct 26, 2021
In this dvar Torah, I share Talmudic stories of rabbis trying to honor their mothers in ways that are both comical and also poignant in their alluding to our individual (and often lonely) struggles to honor God and them, especially as they age, with seemingly no yardstick to compare ourselves and manage expectations.
Sunday Oct 10, 2021
Combatting the Curses Against Israel with History, not more Scapegoating
Sunday Oct 10, 2021
Sunday Oct 10, 2021
The last sections of the book of Numbers deal with the local tribes, themselves fighting and displacing each other, refusing to grant the Israelite refugees safe passage through their lands. As a consequence of this moral failing, they lose the right to keep the land --an important message of Torah. In fact, coupled with their denials of safe passage, they hire the famous Near-Eastern Bilaam to magically curse the Israelites with fraught words justifying violence against them. It's like this entire section was relived in the years approaching 1948, when local Arab populations opposed Jewish refugees buying land and living peacefully in British Mandate Palestine, and instead attacked them. Ever since they resort to Bilaam curses, the use of factually incorrect curse words of "Genocide," "Apartheid," "Settler Colonialism," "Ethnic Cleansing," "Daily Massacres of Children," and "Not Indigenous" to scapegoat Jews and justify violence against them, not just in Israel but in intimidation and harrassment on the campuses in the U.S. In this Yom Kippur morning sermon, I name this reenactment of the end of Numbers and propose that Jews respond not with compaints about anti-Semitism, but with a campaign of history, along with a renewed consciousness that is not a victim consciousness but is a creator consciousness that is inclusive of Arabs, so we don't lose our moral authority in the Land.
Monday Oct 04, 2021
Instagram, Depression and the Serpent Voice: ”And They Knew They Were Naked”
Monday Oct 04, 2021
Monday Oct 04, 2021
The creation stories of Genesis blend mythological motifs with reflections on the moral consequences of human evolution. When we understand the serpent voice to be the appearance of the human inner voice --the beginnings of evolutionary, human self-consciousness, a consequence of eating of the fruit of the garden-- then the hiding that Adam does, not because they have disobeyed God (as one presumes on a first read) but because for the first time they know they are naked, is crucial to notice. The possibilities of self-consciousness are immense --they include becoming like God by living in past, present, and future at once, they include radical intentionality and subjectivity-- but also include the dark side, a preoccupation with self-consciousness in its most mundane meaning, a preoccupation with wondering what people think of one, the feeling of being naked in front of others, the nightmare of showing up at school in one's underwear. What do people think of us? Do they like us? What about our physical appearance are they reacting to? How do they compare us to others, favorably or unfavorably? This is the serpent voice in our heads, of our inner "I," the one that nips at our heels and we try to clobber on the head but only goes away only temporarily but always returns. Research shows that this serpent voice is amplified to monstrous degrees by social media: Are my posts liked? Are others making fun of my appearance in the photo? Am I totally ignored? Am I left out? How can I cultivate a persona that garners "likes"? How can I grown that persona, maintain it, even as it detaches from any connection to my authentic self, so when God says, "Ayekah?" Where/who are you really? God knows the self I'm wearing is the product of the serpent voice, my cultivated and emotionally crushing phony self?