From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

Joy! How do we get back to joy?       There are plenty of times in our lives when joy is easy. We saw that this morning. When a beautiful daughter and granddaughter like Adeline Lake is born, joy is easy. When that beautiful baby grows into a radiant and wonderful teen like Robin whose Bat Mitzvah we celebrate today, joy is easy. When we dance at the wedding of a loved one who has found love, joy is easy. Joy is easy not only at these lifecycle moments. When we love to ski, and we are on the slopes on a perfect day, fresh powder, blue sky, bright sun, gorgeous conditions, joy is easy. When we love to bike, and we are on the road, and the wind is at our back, joy is easy. But what about times when joy is not easy. For the Jewish people now, joy is not easy. For the State of Israel now, joy is not easy. This Monday will mark two weeks since the hostages came home. Now that the euphoria of their return has passed, what’s next? For the last two years, we have largely lived in the land of oy. We need to pivot from

October 18, 2025

October 14, 2025

Obviously, there is only one thing to talk about. Please God in the next few days the twenty Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza are to be released as part of phase one of the deal brokered by President Trump, his team, and a host of nations. More than two years after they were taken hostage, these twenty surviving hostages who have been in hell for an eternity will at long last be home, reunited with their families. And the question is, how do we process this monumental and joyful event?

Do you remember, with crystal clarity, a class that you attended thirty years ago? I remember one such class like it happened yesterday—both what was said in the class, and how it made me feel.It was a class attended by rabbinical and cantorial students, and Jewish educators and federation workers. The class was taught by Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, who was at the time a congregational rabbi in Minnesota. Elka has since gone on to head the Wexner Foundation. The class was August, 1995, in Cape Cod. The topic at first felt like a double disconnect. She was talking about Sukkot, two months before Sukkot. And she was talking about a word, a concept, a ritual, I had never heard of before: Ushpizin.The word Ushpizin is Aramaic for guest. It refers to a mystical Sukkot tradition that comes from the Zohar in which people invite seven biblical figures to our Sukkah. The tradition has, I would say, a little bit of a patriarchal feel. The seven invited guests traditionally are: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph an

On October 7, 2023, the world changed both in Israel and here in the United States for us as Jews. Antisemitism has become mainstream, most visibly in academia. On the first day of Sukkot, October 7th, Dr. Mark Poznansky shares stories from the trenches of academic medicine where he and his colleagues are making a difference and charting a path for us to make a difference too.

Judaism has always, from the very beginning, been a counter point to the surrounding culture. Most of us have grown up in a Jewish community that has struggled to blend our surrounding culture with our ancient tradition. But as the culture around us becomes unbearable, maybe this is the exact time to reclaim our roots!About Rabbi Ravid TillesRabbi Ravid Tilles is the School Rabbi and Director of Jewish Life and Learning at Schechter Boston. He and his wife, Yaffa, and three sons are members of the Temple Emanuel family.

Every Sunday morning, in the daily psalm, Psalm 24, we praise consistent, steady, disciplined ethical behavior:           Who may ascend the mountain of Adonai?          Who may rise in God’s sanctuary?          One who has clean hands and a pure heart. Unlike the teaching from Berakhot, that the penitent stands in a place the Tzadik cannot stand, the Sunday psalm exalts consistency, discipline and self-restraint, not struggle and growth. Tomorrow we will examine two biblical characters who embody these models. King David, who commits adultery with Bathsheba, and has her husband Uriah killed, and is chastised by the prophet Nathan. David authors Psalm 51, the words of a penitent heart. Joseph, young and single, is propositioned by his boss Potiphar’s wife, and says no repeatedly. In today’s context Joseph would be seen as a victim of repeated sexual harassment by an employer who has power over him,  but he never succumbs. The Talmud’s only question is whether he was tempted or not. Two rabbis disagree on that

October 2, 2025

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi wanted to find out who was best at doing conversions. They find a bear in the woods. The priest says let me give it a try. He comes back a few minutes later smiling. I told the bear how beautiful communion is, and he is coming to our mass this Wednesday morning. The minister says I’ll go next. He comes back a few minutes later smiling. I told the bear about the glory of Bible study, and he is coming to our class this Sunday at noon. The rabbi says let me give it a try. He doesn’t come back for a good long while, and when he finally does, he is bloodied, bruised, and bandaged. “In retrospect,” the rabbi says, “maybe it was not the best idea to start with circumcision.”That joke has been around forever, but I bring it up now because the laugh line is no longer so funny. To care a lot about Israel and the Jewish people this past year has been heavy and hard. And then one day, Shira and I were listening to a podcast host named Mel Robbins, who has a lot to say about how to thrive

Ofir Amir is co-founder and CFO of the Tribe of Nova Foundation, established after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival. Wounded while escaping, Ofir survived and later helped transform tragedy into a movement of healing and resilience.Before the attack, he was deeply involved in building the Nova community of music, unity, and love. Today, he co-produces the Nova Music Festival Exhibition, an international initiative honoring victims, supporting survivors, and raising funds for mental health care and Beit Nova—a permanent center for remembrance and recovery in Israel.Through his leadership and testimony, Ofir amplifies the voices of survivors and ensures their stories of courage live on.

“In the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand.” Berakhot 34B Last week we encountered this Talmudic teaching which privileges the struggle, the growth, the journey, the learning, of the person who realized they were not living their best life, and they embarked upon teshuvah to live a better life. This week we are going to double click on this teaching that prizes struggle and growth in two ways. One, what are the ideas behind it? We will see the perspectives of an arch rationalist (Maimonides), the Hasidic master Rebbi Nachman of Bratslov, and the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the Alter Rebbe, who authored a work called The Tanya. Each has a different interpretation as to why struggle and growth are prized. Two, what does artwork that celebrates this kind of struggle and growth look like? We will examine works of Yoko Ono, Wish Tree, Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, and Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrors. What do each of these works of art say about the journey of the so

Last month I got an email that reassured me that all will be well with the world. That joy and blessing are very much alive.The email attached a photo of two women who are long-time members of our congregation. The younger one is only 103. The older one is 104. They have been friends since they were 12. Do the math, and that is one long, rich friendship. They were having lunch with their daughters. The picture is of the four of them all smiling at their lunch. Both women read the paper every day. Both women exercise every day. Both women talk to their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and friends every day. Both women are totally up on what is happening in the world. Their beautiful lives, 103 and 104 years old, and still living, feels biblical. And it is. Their lives evoke Moses who, at the end of his life at the age of 120, is described as loh khahatah eino v’loh nas lechoh, Moses’s vision was undimmed and his vigor unabated. He lives, richly, until his last breath.I had always thought that only

An older gentlemen needed surgery for a rare medical challenge. Turns out that the best surgeon in town was his own son. As the father was about to go under, he asked to speak to his son. Yes, Dad, what is it? Son, do not be nervous. Do your best. I trust you. Just remember one thing. If it does not go well, if something happens to me on the operating table, your mother will live with you and your wife for the rest of her life.How do we navigate hard times? We all know that we are living in hard times. Is there some way to turn hard times into beautiful outcomes—in fact beautiful outcomes that only happen as a result of how we navigated those hard times?

Recently, as part of a routine medical procedure, I needed to get hooked up to an IV. Unfortunately, the nurse who did it, while very nice, had a hard time. She poked a needle into my arm and said, oh, so sorry, that didn’t work. She poked a needle into my arm a second time and said, oh, so sorry, that didn’t work either. Let me ask one of the other nurses. Another nurse came and the third time was a charm. The IV took.When the procedure was over, and I got home, I was fine, but I noticed that my arm had all these cuts and bruises. I wanted sympathy. So I went to my wife in search of that sympathy. I pointed to my right arm. I pointed to the wounds, which I called, for greater effect, lacerations, contusions, and hematomas. Shira look at these lacerations from the bungled IV attempt! Look at these contusions! I think this is a hematoma!! From the bungled IV!!I’m not sure what I was expecting. But I wasn’t expecting what I got. What I got was, Shira took one look at my arm and said: Buck up buttercup. Excuse m

The main religious value concept for our High Holiday season is teshuvah, repentance.Given the centrality of teshuvah in Judaism, and in the Jewish calendar now, the Torah’s treatment of teshuvah is curious indeed. It appears very late in the game. There is zero mention of teshuvah in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers. Teshuvah does not appear until Deuteronomy chapter 30. Why so late?And when teshuvah finally appears, it is only after total disaster has already struck. The Israelites will have angered God so much that God will destroy the land and exile the Israelites.            The Lord uprooted them from their soil in anger, fury, and great wrath, and cast them            into another land, as is still the case.  (Deut. 29:27)Is teshuvah meant to be our code red response to our code red disaster?Finally, the last verse right before teshuvah is mentioned is one of the classic stumpers of the Torah.            Concealed acts concern the Lord our God; but with overt acts, it is for us and            our

The two lands we love, America and Israel, both have a problem. The problem is real, recurrent, and deadly. The problem showed up in both lands this week. The problem is violence and lack of regard for the sanctity of human life, lack of regard for the Bible’s most important teaching: that all human beings are created in God’s image and therefore deserve to live and to be treated with respect and dignity.On Monday morning, at a busy bus stop in Jerusalem, two shooters fired upon ordinary people living an ordinary day, killing six innocent people, the victims of terrorism. The shots were fired in Jerusalem. But the effects were felt in Newton. The effects were felt in our preschool, right here.One of the victims was Rabbi Mordechai Steintzag. His daughter Tanya teaches at our preschool. On Monday Tanya flew to Israel to attend her father’s funeral. Like Rabbi Steintzag, every one of the victims was innocent; was loved; did good in the world; did not deserve to be murdered; loved their life and their families;

In last week’s class we encountered the Greek myth of Icarus who, ignoring his father’s advice, flew too high and too close to the sun so that his wings made of wax and feathers melted, he fell to the sea, and died. In class one of our learners offered a poignant coda. While the rest of the world did not see and did not care about Icarus dying, his father Daedalus cared very much. His father gathers his fallen son and buries him. Daedalus loves his son so much. Cares about him so much. And controls so little. If the son makes decisions that undermine his own life--indeed that end his own life--there is nothing that Daedalus can do but mourn. The Hebrew Bible also contains a powerful story of a father whose heart is broken by the self-destructive decisions of his son: David and Absalom. Absalom rebels and leads an army against his father, King David. When David hears that Absalom has died—his long hair caught up in the branches of a tree, which allowed his enemies to slay him—David famously laments: “My son Ab

For many of us, this week has been the week of the big pivot. We pivoted from August to September; from summer to fall; from vacation to obligation; from light and breezy summer rhythm to an alarm clock that wakes us up to face the reality of a schedule. Back to school. Back to shul. Back to the High Holidays coming up with their invitation to take stock of our lives. All of which is very different from going to the beach or going to Tanglewood or climbing a mountain in New Hampshire or enjoying the gorgeous green of Vermont or the waters of Cape Cod, Nantucket, Nantasket, or Martha’s Vineyard.In short, how do we think about a return to the daily grind?

Icarus has so much to say to us now, a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah.According to Greek mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun with wings made of feather and wax. The sun’s heat melted the wax, and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.In 1560, the Netherlandish master Peter Bruegel the Elder painted a masterpiece entitled Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. This painting is now displayed in a museum in Brussels. The title is so evocative. To Icarus, no story was more important than Icarus. To Icarus, his flying so high, falling so low, and meeting an untimely end in a cold sea in a cold world was all-important. It was THE story. But there is a broader landscape where the fall of Icarus was not only not the story. It was not noticed at all. There are three peasants each doing their thing, plowing, herding and fishing. They are totally absorbed in their own world. They neither see nor care about Icarus.The pathos of the painting—the desperate pain of one, utterly unseen by others—has inspired poetry by Wil