From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

Rabbi Samuel Chiel, of blessed memory, used to say: the Jewish people are not superstitious…kenahorah. Recently I was an eyewitness to the birth, the thriving, and the death of a superstition…kenahora. It happened in our evening minyan in the Gann Chapel, and it concerned the seating arrangement of two of our evening minyan regulars, Grant Finkel and Lisa Hills. Every night Grant sits in the section to the left, facing the bimah, in the second row. Every night Lisa Hills sits in the section to the right, facing the bimah, in the first row. That is how it has been forever. But one night, for whatever reason, only God knows, Grant Finkel sat next to Lisa Hills in the first row of her section. He had never sat there before. And do you know what happened as a result? I’ll tell you what happened. The Celtics won that night. They were in the midst of a playoff series.  Their play had been inconsistent.  The previous game they had not played so well in the fourth quarter and lost.  But the night that Grant sat

This Shabbat is the second day of Shavuot—a good time to think about our relationship to the Torah as a source of law (halakhah) that is supposed to shape how we live every day.  Problem: For most of us, it doesn’t.  The Torah says: keep kosher. Many of us don’t.  The Torah says: observe Shabbat. For many of us, Saturday is not Shabbat but another weekend day, not particularly distinguishable from Sunday.  The Torah (as the rabbis interpret it) says: we are obligated to pray daily. Many of us don’t. Perhaps we come to shul when we have a Yahrtzeit, or when we are invited to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or an auf ruf. But few of us actually believe we are required to pray every day. Witness that in our congregation of almost 4,000 souls, we average 20 to 40 people at our daily minyanim.  The Torah we received at Sinai posits a commanding God whose commands we are obligated to observe.  Few, if any of us, believe in that commanding God.  There is a disconnect between the commanding God we are supposed to believe in and th

May 20, 2023

Shira and I spent the last two weeks of December at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem being with our father. While attending to a loved one in these circumstances is obviously painful, at the same time, we marveled at how day-to-day life at Hadassah Hospital felt not only like Israel at its best, but almost like the fulfillment of prophetic visions of peace, of the lion and lamb dwelling together in harmony.   The patients, doctors, nurses, medical crews, cleaning and maintenance crews, cashiers in the restaurants and cafes, represent the enormous diversity of Israel: Haredi, religious Zionists, secular Israelis, Arab Israelis, Palestinian Israelis, Druse, side by side, in harmony. We were there during Hanukkah. Every night we would go to the community room on our floor and light candles with all the above. Outside of Hadassah, there would have been no connection. Inside of Hadassah, there was no distance. The only Haredi Israelis I have ever talked to were at Hadassah Hospital.   We are so blessed this Shabbat

Dan is a board member of Repair the World (Jewish engagement through service) and the Friends of the Arava Institute (bringing Arabs and Jews together in Israel to address environmental and climate issues). He is a long-time member of Temple Emanuel and has, over the years, volunteered with other Jewish organizations, including Combined Jewish Philanthropies, JCDS, the Newton Centre Minyan, and Our Generation Speaks. In his free time, Dan created a software package for calculating income tax, as well as software to help attorneys and individuals with the financial aspects of divorce.

How do we think about Mother’s Day when our own mother has passed away? Even if we are blessed to have our mothers alive,  how do we think about lots of joyful moments in the spring season when that joy belongs to other people, but not to us?  How do we dance at somebody else’s adult child’s wedding when our own adult child is still looking? How do we feel joy for somebody else’s graduations when our own season of graduations is long gone, when young family energy is a distant memory? How do we attend a brit milah or baby naming for somebody else when there are no babies in our family? In our parched season, can we truly feel joy for somebody else? This is the question of the prophet Habakkuk in the Haftarah for Shavuot, second day:              Though the fig tree does not bud            And no yield is on the vine,            Though the olive crop has failed            And the fields produce no grain,            Though sheep have vanished from the fold            And no cattle are in the pen,             Y

If you are a Boston sports fan, two words inspire pathos: Boston Bruins. This past regular season, the Bruins enjoyed not just a successful season, but a historically successful season. The National Hockey League, NHL, is 106 years old. In the long history of the league, this year’s Bruins set the record for most wins in a season. They set the record for most points in a season. Not only did they win lots of games; they usually trounced their opponent. The NHL keeps a record of what is called goal differential: by how many goals did the winning team beat the losing team. Boston’s goal differential ranks second in history. During the regular season the Bruins could not have been more dominant. Meanwhile, their opponents in the playoffs, the Florida Panthers, could not have been more mediocre. Literally an average team, actually below average. Out of 32 teams, the Panthers had the 17th best record. They just barely made the playoffs. When the series started, the Bruins took a commanding 3-1 lead in a

When the history of twentieth-century Jewry is written, I believe that one of the most important, impactful, influential thinkers will be Rabbi Harold Kushner, who was laid to his eternal rest this past Monday. I do not know of a rabbi whose teaching had a broader reach or a bigger impact.  It is not just that his books sold millions of copies.  Not just that his books were translated into many languages.  Not just that his work was read by Jews and non-Jews alike.  Rabbi Harold Kushner did something else virtually miraculous: he talked about God in a way that landed for ordinary people who do not usually talk about God. What was his secret sauce? How did he make God real and relatable for millions of people, Jews and non-Jews alike? Now that he has passed, how can his Torah on God connect with you?   May Rabbi Harold Kushner rest in peace. May his Torah deepen our relationship with God, with Torah, with mitzvah, and with the very special community we are blessed to have at Temple Emanuel.

Join Rabbi Michelle Robinson and Jill Ebstein as they discuss Jill's book, "Alfred's Journey to be Liked". Find the book here!

April 29, 2023

Join Oren Kessler as he discusses his book, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict.

For some reason--I don’t know why it happens, I just know that it happens--tensions seem to rise in a family before a big milestone or family simcha. People tend to argue. To bicker. To get into negative energy patterns. The classic example of weird negative energy preceding what should be a happy family time is a wedding. If you have ever planned a wedding, you know this. As the day draws near, anxiety rises. Lists proliferate. Who is going to go to Costco to get the bottled water and the small bags of Cape Cod potato chips? Who is going to the hotels to drop off the gifts baskets? We just had a Covid cancellation. We need to redo table 11. Simcha anxiety is such a well-known phenomenon that I tell every couple that I have ever worked with for their wedding to get out of the wedding business a week before their wedding—no more wedding details, no more wedding to do lists—so that they can spend that last week focusing on what matters: their love for one another. We the Jewish people are now having a

When I was home for Thanksgiving this year, my mom and I were going through some old boxes at the bottom of a closet when we came across a bag of colorful fabrics.  “What’s this?” I asked my mom. With a funny look on her face, my mom took the bag and started looking through it.  “This is the quilt I was going to make you when you were a baby.” Apparently, when I was born, my mom didn’t want to just be a stay-at-home caretaker.  She wanted to feel productive.  To be able to show something beyond a growing baby for the time she was spending at home.  Naturally, she decided to make a baby quilt.  She went to the fabric store and picked out a book of quilt patterns, she bought fabric and washed it, and then every day, when she would put me down for a nap, she would go and work on that quilt.  It all seemed to be going well until it came time to put the squares together.  Then, somehow, they wouldn’t fit.  At the time, my mom was so sleep-deprived that she couldn’t figure out how to make it work.  She threw those

For those of you hearty enough to come to shul on the seventh day of Pesach, I want to share with you a love story—in fact a Pesach double love story.  But to appreciate this double love story, we need first to talk about halakha, Jewish law.  When was the last time that happened in a sermon?  The Torah commands us to have no chametz in our possession during the holiday of Pesach.  Chametz is  defined as five species of grain: wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and oats.  It is not just that we can’t eat chametz.  It is also that we cannot have chametz, cannot own chametz.  Our homes have to be chametz-free. Now we have all had the experience, when cleaning our house for Pesach, of finding in the back of the food pantry a stale box of crackers with the expiration date of February 2020.  We happily dispose of the stale crackers grateful for the impetus Pesach gives us to do a deep cleaning of our kitchen once a year. But what do we do with all the chametz that is fresh, the fresh boxes of pasta and crackers?  It would

April 8, 2023

Lhakpa Sherpa grew up impoverished in the shadow of Mount Everest.  Her father worked as a shepherd and her mother raised her along with her ten siblings.  They were dirt poor.  So poor that they couldn’t afford to buy shoes for the children, let alone to send Lhakpa to school.  Instead, she spent her days wandering barefoot through the mountains. Ever since she was little, Lhakpa has had one dream: she wanted to climb Mount Everest.  At the time, women were not welcome to try.  Every climber was male, every Sherpa porter was male, and even the thought of a woman trying to climb Mount Everest was enough to make experienced mountaineers laugh out loud.  When Lhakpa was about 15, she started hanging around base camp and begging the Sherpa porters there to give her a chance.  She spent two years pleading, begging, lobbying, and trying to persuade them before Babu Chhiri Sherpa, a legend in his own right who once spent a record-breaking 21 hours on the top of Mount Everest without oxygen, agreed to give her a cha

Israel. The images of civil unrest playing out in Israel this past Monday are images we never thought we would see. Demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Israelis; counter demonstrations; the airport closed; IDF soldiers and reservists and pilots refusing to serve; general strikes; universities closing; ambassadors resigning; a high government official, Yoav Gallant, fired for speaking his mind and asking for dialogue. All this happening just as Israel is about to celebrate its 75th anniversary. And all this happening just as we are about to sit down to our seders Wednesday and Thursday nights. How, if at all, do we talk about Israel at our seders?

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” - William Faulkner  Faulkner’s famous quotation underlies all of Rachel Korazim’s sessions in this series about the crisis in Israel today. To understand the push for reform, and the protests against reform, we went back to the Altalena incident in 1948 (March 18 Talmud class) and to what Arabs in Israel have come to call their naqba, also 1948 (March 25 Talmud class).  Rachel takes us to the Wadi Salib neighborhood of Haifa on July 9, 1959, when police shot and wounded a man named Yaakov Elkarif, as a result of which riots ensued. These riots were fueled by tensions between Ashkenazis and Mizrachis—all of which is brought to life by the poems we will consider tomorrow. The tensions today are in part fueled by unresolved tensions between Ashkenazis and Mizrachis. The past is never dead. It’s not even past. We here may not be able to solve the tensions at play on the streets of Israel today. But Rachel’s teaching will enable us to better understand them. Learning i

How can you make sure to have the most meaningful and impactful Passover? Is it about preparation? The extent to which you clean out every cabinet and kasher your kitchen? Is it about the Seder itself—the Haggadah you choose and the activities you plan for the Seder? In the spring of 2014, I was in my second year of rabbinical school and got a gig as a cruise-ship rabbi. Given that this was my first real gig as a rabbi, I was determined to create the most meaningful Passover experience ever. I researched for months leading up to Pesach and put together a folder of midrashim and teachings for every part of the Seder. Little did I know what the cruise had in store for me.....

Talk to any Israeli, talk to any American who has recently been to Israel, and the words one hears are: depressing, very concerning, unprecedented, I’m afraid. I don’t know how this ends.  How did we get here? Where does this story begin?  Last week, Rachel Korazim, our Israeli teacher of Israeli poetry, made a point that is so simple, so profound, and so important. The conflicts playing out in Israel did not just spontaneously happen in year 75. They have been cooking for 75 years. Their roots go back to the beginning of Israel’s existence. Last week she talked about how the Altalena conflict evinced deep conflicts among Jewish Israelis that continue to play out on the streets today. This week, Rachel is going to go back to 1948 again, to what Palestinians call the Naqba, as reflected in this poetry. There is no more urgent issue for American Jews than Israel. There is no better teacher on Israel than Rachel Korazim. Let’s learn together.