The sound of the shofar is such a visceral, ancient sound. When we blow the actual horn of an animal on Rosh Hashanah, it stirs in each of us a unique feeling. The shofar is simultaneously a wake up call, an alarm, a call to assembly, a call to action, and an announcement. This year, …
https://www.youtube.com/embed/1SqBmTMczi8 Taking advantage of our need to lean into technology during this time of COVID, I recorded my Rosh Hashanah sermon. I know we complain that 2020 can not be over soon enough, but look on the bright side, 5780 is over tonight. It has been a most difficult year. And while gathering like this, …
I usually like to enter the new year slowly, having enough time to collect my thoughts and intentions. I would have been planning for weeks, though our community has developed its own sweet minhag and customs, and so that very often means planning is smooth. This year is, of course, different. We have had to …
I, like you, am struggling during these times. For me, my number one symptom in response to the pandemic and the disruption it has brought has been my time management. Since this pandemic began, time has become completely upended. School schedules changed, work schedules changed, family routines turned around. Our older son who had moved …
Continue reading The High Holidays 5781: Different and the Same
Last week, on the 17th of Tammuz, I was listening to a report on NPR about the (then) potential name change of the Washington DC professional football team. For its entire history, the team carried a nickname that was a derogatory term for Native Americans, and Monday the team announced they would retire that name …
The other day I was driving from the westside to the eastside through downtown Olympia and I just couldn't believe we had gotten to this point. Everyone who was out, casually going about their day, was wearing a mask, keeping their distance from other people, and walking passed closed and boarded up businesses. It's not …
Throughout the 40-year journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land, the Torah teaches, the former slaves learn what it is to become a nation. In the book of Numbers, which we are reading as part of our annual Torah reading cycle, the Israelites time and time again test Moses and God as they journey …
This week we read the famous story of the spies, who were sent into Canaan to scout it out in anticipation of the Israelites moving in. Moses sent 12 spies/scouts--one from each tribe--into the land. They spent 40 days wandering about, taking notes, looking around, and then returned to the Israelites to report. They all …
In the Torah this week we are told to make trumpets: God spoke to Moses, saying: Have two silver trumpets made; make them of hammered work. They shall serve you to summon the community and to set the divisions in motion. When both are blown in long blasts, the whole community shall assemble before you …
