Judaism for the Thinking Person

Leading our Children to Transcendence

The oldest, continually used blessing in the world is the Torah's "Priestly Blessing."  May God bless you [with bounty] and guard you.  May God's face radiate grace (of getting your needs met) upon you.  May God turn God's face to you [when you don't get what you need] so [you do not feel alone but meet God there and] God places peace within you.

The Rabbis stress that the person blessing is merely a "window" to letting God in, but in this Dvar Torah I question whether this isn't exactly what we wish to avoid -- letting God in.  We want to let us in!  We spend our time building a world of domestic familiarity and home, and build our children up with their accomplishments.  Transcendence runs absolutely against that:  it puts you in the context of the Eternal drama, not your own:  achievement, knowledge, and the cathedral of the self [we telling our hero stories] take a far second place in transcendence, where our ego is seen in its puniness, and we feel the calm of taking our place in the eternal dramas of humanity, nature, and experience.  Transcendence teaches gratitude for participation in the human journey, calm, perspective, and the movement toward shalom (contentment) in one's lot, rather than protection.  In this sermon, I ask how we lead our children to be prepared to encounter God, not us.

Reopening the Synagogue When People Are Coming up the Down Staircase

How do we reopen the synagogue after over a year of being virtual?  For some it's procedural:  distance appropriately, follow guidelines, limit numbers, maybe wait on the food.  But the Temple is not a gathering of bodies, it's a gathering of souls.  How do we reopen appropriately to be a holy community, one that recognizes each other as souls?  One of my favorite mishnayot speaks to this, and I was happy to be scooped by Professor Naomi Kalish in applying it to us today:  https://www.jtsa.edu/struggling-to-celebrate   There are four categories of people who went up the downstaircase at the Temple, and down the up staircase:  the one in mourning, the one caring for a relative, the one who has been isolated, and the one who has lost a precious object.   In this Dvar Torah on Emor, I apply these to our norms for a holy reopening.

Helpful picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Huldah_Gates3344.JPG

God the Mother

Leviticus ends with a long list of horrifying predictions (or curses) of the vicious suffering of the Israelites when they eventually enter the Land and break the covenant.  Western Civilization has been shaped by European Christian intellectuals who created the unchallenged image (and therefore a Western bias) that the God of the Old Testament is a God who is disposed toward anger and punishment, who seems to enjoy punisment and retribution (and thus God had to be made flesh in the Son to introduce Love).  In this podcast, I ask us to hear these verses as the words of the Mother, who, as in Wendell Berry's poem (which I read at the end) sees the Mother foreseeing one's sins, suffering in that foreknowledge with you, before you, with love and forgiveness already there symbolized by the made bed, the "you can always come home" that transcends the future into the past.  Is the angry God we project, really the No-God of Jeremiah, the idol of our own making, which externalizes our own anger at climate change, social and racial inequality, rather than God the Mother who suffers along with us within the thorn bush of the Burning Bush but is not consumed?

Ross Douthat, Biblical Impurity, and Antipathy toward the Temple

Is Leviticus's insistence that those with skin afflictions (as well as having buried the dead) not go to Temple an exclusionary punishment for being sick?  Or is that our modern reading which presumes that religion is exclusionary and judgmental?  In this presentation, I use Ross Douthat's essay "Can the Meritocracy Find God?
The secularization of America probably won’t reverse unless the intelligentsia gets religion" as a way to talk about America's prejudices against religion, and my particular concern that even Jewish leaders like me are too silent in the face of the current hype that all the cool innovation (and funding) is happening outside of our legacy institutions [which actually is an unchallenged claim mainly by people who don't go to synagogue] and that our success as communities should be judged as to how easy we make it for unaffiliated Jews to get their needs met without having to attend the Temple as it exists in our day.  Is that respectful of the Temple?

Jewish Law on Cremation and Burial, and What We're Facing as the Numbers Rise

As the percentage of Jews opting for cremation has risen from around 2% to over 20% in twenty years, how do we balance the mitzvah of burial of Jewish remains with the prohibition on cremation?

The Tabernacle -- and our Lives-- as a Purposeful Composition

Inspired by the teachings of the great American ceramicist, Richard DeVore, I examine what the mishkan tells us about the nature of artistic composition, drawing a stark contrast between Golden Calves and Purposeful Composition, in Exodus, and especially in how we live our lives. 

Keruvim, Cherubim, Griffins, Sphinxes, and the angel Rafael

What were the Keruvim, the two hybrid beast angels 10 cubits high protecting the Ark of the Covenant, and from between whom God speaks?  I rehearse all the theories, and end with a Maimonidean vision of what the angel as an extension of God's presence really is.

The Building of the Tabernacle through the Lens of the Black Church

Given that some of the most influential narratives and Torah legislation are but a few verses long, why is so much of the book of Exodus chapters and chapters of detailed, repetitive descriptions of the instructions and building of the Tabernacle (Mishkan), the priestly uniforms, the utensils, the hundreds of curtain rods and hooks?  I answer this question through my reflecting on the observations of Henry Louis Gates in his PBS Series (during Black History month) on the history of the Black Church in America.  

Making Sense of the Most Disturbing Statement in the Bible

No statement by God seems more morally challenging than the prophet Samuel's demand for the complete annhilation of the Amalekites and their animals, followed by his condemnation of Saul for failing to kill King Agag and the choicest of the animals.  The Amalekites are equated with the nature of evil itself, and so the resurgence of evil and especially genocidal anti-Semitism throughout the rest of time is somehow linked to the failure to "complete the job" of vanquishing them earlier on.  In this very brief teaching, I try to learn a lesson we might otherwise resist from this troublesome piece of Tanakh:  the tendency to fail to complete the job, often through unacknowledged selfish interest that hides beneath the seemingly noble action of "moving on."

"God, Let me receive good counsel!" The 5 minute practice that will change your life

In this 5 minute teaching, I read a poem by Zbigniew Herbert and then share a seriously short spiritual practice that involves receiving the deepest of advice.  In that, I connect the prayer Hashkiveinu to the Mourners Kaddish to my own experience of practicing it.