Friday December 27, 2024/26 Kislev 5785 Parashat Miketz/Shabbat Hanukkah Hevre/Friends,   On the first night of Hanukkah about 75...

Friday December 20, 2024/19 Kislev 5785 Parashat Vayeshev וַיֹּ֕אמֶר-- אֶת־אַחַ֖י אָנֹכִ֣י מְבַקֵּ֑שׁ  [J oseph] answered, I am looking...

Friday December 13, 2024/12 Kislev 5785 Parashat Vayetze Hevre/Friends, This time next week Andi and I will be back in the Laurentians...

Friday December 6, 2024/5 Kislev 5785 Parashat Vayetze Hevre/Friends, When people ask about my experience growing up in the Orthodox...

Friday November 22, 2024/21 H eshvan 5785 Parashat Chaye Sarah Hevre/Friends, The most dramatic story in parashat Chaye Sarah is the one...

It sounds so simple: be grateful for all we have. And yet, there are times when it’s just really hard to feel it.

Yesterday over coffee after a grueling exercise class, I got a loving but firm lecture from my daughter (when did those tables turn?).

Friday November 8, 2024/7 H eshvan 5785 Parashat Lech Lecha Hevre/Friends, In his 2005 essay on holding together the tensions of...

It’s 4:35 in the morning and I’m lying awake waiting to die.  Not that there’s anything wrong with me. Other than the fact I’m convinced...

Friday November 1, 2024/Rosh Chodesh H eshvan Parashat Noa h Hevre/Friends, This past Wednesday in my Contemporary Halakhah (Jewish Law)...

My mother is 86 years old. She was raised in a non-observant, secular Jewish home just a few blocks from here. As a young adult, she felt...

Here’s the good news: I’m not going to preach to you today. Here’s the bad news: I’m still going to deliver a sermon. What I’m actually...

When people ask about my experience growing up in the Orthodox community and making my way to the Conservative rabbinate, I often hear...

How many times have you been out to dinner with friends and someone looks at you and your spouse or your partner and asks: “ So, how did...

V’asu li mikdash v’shakhanti betokham. Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true. And with thanksgiving, I’ll be...

Drashah 2023/5784: From Days of Fear to Days of Awe Kol Haolam kulo, gesher tzar me’od v’haikar lo lefahed clal…the whole world is a...

Yom Kippur 2022 "Once in a while, you find a place on earth that becomes your very own. A place undefined. Waiting for you to bring your...

First Day Rosh Hashanah 2022/5783 On the night of Monday, April 11 I got one of those phone calls we all dread. And in that uncanny way,...

Two Solitudes Most people don’t know that in the late 1970s, after Shabbat was over in Jerusalem, on the corner of Balfour Street in...

Ancient Persia or Modern America? Delivered March 4, 2023 at B'nai Jeshurun Shabbat Scholar in Residence Shabbat Shalom! I’d like to...

It seems that everyone has something to say about turning 50 – those who’ve been there, and those who observe from afar. Magazines,...

Sometimes he knows who I am; sometimes he doesn’t. I’m not sure which is better. My father’s dementia at times coddles him in blissful...

For a biblical tradition that prides itself on literary efficiency, it’s odd that our Torah portion this morning, Terumah, is the first...

February 18, 2023 | Ivry Have you ever wondered why God made Moses climb up a mountain to get the Torah?  Wouldn’t it have been just as...