D’var Torah 2/10/18: Parashat Mishpatim – Rabbi Devorah Jacobson
(With thanks to Margaret Mastrangelo, Rabbi Ben Weiner, and Zvi Rozen) Like some of you here today, I spent many years of my childhood going to Hebrew school. I know…
D’var Torah 1/13/18: Jewish Foster Care – Dane Kuttler
For several years in my early twenties, I worked at a residential group home. The children who lived there – some for years at a time – were between the…
Yom Kippur Morning 5778/2017: The Wandering Goat – RBW
About a hundred years ago today, on September 30th, 1919, a large group of black sharecroppers had gathered in a church in Hoop Spur, three miles north of Elaine, Arkansas,…
Kol Nidre 5778/2017: To Vow or Not to Vow – RBW
One of the primary techniques within the Jewish art of words, when seeking to establish the precise interpretation of a Hebrew term, is to examine the different ways it is…
Rosh Hashanah Day Two 5778/2017: The Missing Pieces – RBW
There are a few things missing from the Torah portion we read today, the Akedah, the story of the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, but…
Rosh Hashanah Day One 5778/2017: Moses and Polytheism – RBW
My son, Efraim, seldom strikes me as more Jewish than when he says the following words: “I don’t want to go to Hebrew School.” This past Sunday, I took him…
D’var Torah for Shabbat Chol HaMoed Sukkot – Judy Davis
Judy Davis D’var 2016 (Ki Tissa, Sh’mot Exodus 33:12-34:26 (D’vorim/Deuteronomy 16:13-17) Hope in the Desert Good Shabbos, everyone. This is the third time I’m speaking on this special parashat for…
Yom Kippur 5777/2016: On Responsibility – RBW
I wasn’t always a rabbi. I used to be a child, and when I was a kid, the High Holiday services I went to were very long. We did the…
Kol Nidre 5777/2016: On Purity – RBW
This is a tale of the Kotsker Rebbe, may his memory be a blessing. In a little Jewish town, in a ramshackle hut by the river, there lived a poor…
Rosh Hashanah Day Two 5777/2016: On Fear – RBW
I begin with my standard Akedah disclaimer. I know that the story we read this morning, on the face of it, is disturbing, and even obscene. When we take stock…