From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

The pathos of our mother Leah. One of the saddest stories in the Torah concerns Leah and the mandrakes. Last week’s Talmud class ended on a strong, life-affirming note for Leah. Her first three sons (Reuben, Simon and Levi) she named for the idea that now I have given my husband 1, 2, or 3 sons, now maybe he will love me. Jacob’s love still did not come. When she gives birth to her fourth son, she names him Judah: This time I will praise God. I can still praise God, I can still affirm life, in the face of a reality that just is, that just is not ideal and is not solvable. A strong, gritty, life-affirming message from which the Jewish people get their name. There is only one problem. The story does not end there. And the coda to the story, the mandrake story, is heartbreaking.

In Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, Lucy By the Sea, the central protagonist, Lucy Barton, goes through life with an essential question: what is it like to be you? Two people make me think about that question.  The first is Joseph Bankman, who is the Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School.  His academic expertise is tax law.  He is the author of widely used casebooks with exciting names like Federal Income Taxation.  But he is not just a tax nerd.  He is a deeply caring and empathetic professor.  He got an additional degree in clinical psychology so that he could be more helpful in counseling anxious law students.   He also hosted a podcast called WellnessCast for Stanford Law School to discuss “wellness and mental health within the legal profession.”  A tax scholar with heart. The other person I have been thinking about is Barbara Fried.  She is the William W. and Gertrude H. Saunders Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. &nb

Quinta Brunson, the creative genius behind the critical and popular hit show Abbott Elementary, was interviewed by Doreen St. Felix on a recent episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.  St. Felix asked her the most interesting question: Did you ever experience an impactful no? You wanted something, you did not get it, the no caused major disappointment at the time, but in the end the no prompted something positive that would not otherwise have happened. Brunson responded that she once went to a television producer with an idea for a network television show she believed in. The plot of the proposed show was that she and a male friend, both in their 20s, who had a good platonic relationship, slept together once, as a result of which she got pregnant. The show would be about how these two friends co-parent their child—a fact pattern that she said happens all the time. The television producer said no, which stung at the time. But in retrospect, that no helped give birth to Abbott Elementary. In class we conside

I have been thinking a lot this week about Trevor Lawrence.  Trevor Lawrence stands 6-foot-6.  He is a professional quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. As a freshman in college, he led his team, Clemson, to a national championship.  When he declared for the NFL draft, he was labeled a can’t miss talent, a generational football prodigy with the size, the arm strength, and the intelligence to be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game.  It has not quite worked out that way so far in his first year and a half.  That’s a separate conversation.  But he was one of the most heralded and anticipated college quarterbacks ever and was the first player chosen in the draft.  What is the connection between Trevor Lawrence and Thanksgiving weekend and parshat Toldot? Trevor has an older brother named Chase. Chase is also tall. He stands 6-foot-2. But unlike his famous brother Trevor, Chase has zero interest in sports—playing or watching He has not played team sports s

What happened to Rebecca? In last week’s portion (Chayeii Sarah), she is kind to camels. She offers water to thirsty Eliezer, parched from his travels, and then offers water to his camels. Eliezer immediately concludes that Rebecca is so kind she is the right partner for Isaac. But in this week’s portion (Toldot), Rebecca is the opposite of kind. She lies to her blind and dying husband Isaac. She pits her two sons against one another. She corrupts Jacob, enlisting him in her lying scheme. She and Jacob steal the blessing that is properly due to Esau. She explodes her family. How do we understand the trajectory of Rebecca from kindness to deceit? There are 70 faces of Torah, and tomorrow we are going to consider very different reads to this question. Can one muster understanding and empathy for Rebecca on the grounds that Isaac was a challenging husband; that he was limited; that he was wounded; perhaps he was neurodiverse; perhaps he was traumatized in lasting ways by the akeida, in ways that made him hard to

Learn more about Rick here!

Imagine if you could actually fulfill this Jewish teaching. It is short and seems simple. Yet it is somewhere between impossible and even against human nature to fulfill. And yet if we could somehow bring ourselves to do it, doing so would change our lives for the better: Reciting a blessing for health, happiness and good things feels intuitive. Hashem, thank you for our new child or grandchild. Hashem, thank you for my recovery from illness. Hashem, thank you for my surviving this accident or near miss. All that blessing flows from a grateful heart. But this famous teaching in Berakhot would challenge us to bless God for the reversals of life, for our loss, our illness, our pain. How is that even possible? This Shabbat we have a special treat. Rick Stone is a master story-teller, and an expert in the field of story-telling. Learn more about Rick here. At our Talmud class this Shabbat morning, Rick will teach these three brief, evocative Hasidic stories (Trusting i

I love Thanksgiving. It’s a little early, I know. But every year, November comes, and all I can think about is Thanksgiving. I’m going to see my family soon. We’re going to eat turkey and cranberry sauce green beans and sweet potatoes and pies…there was the year I almost got stopped by TSA for bringing too many pies back…I didn’t know they’re considered a liquid. I love all the sweet memories I have of Thanksgivings from my childhood, when we used to gather in my Aunt Vanessa and Uncle Allan’s restaurant, the River Sage, in Evergreen, Colorado or at my grandparents table with the giant mirror. Four years ago, I loved Thanksgiving even more when Solomon proposed to me, and we got to celebrate our engagement with my whole family in Colorado. I loved Thanksgiving three years ago because we were just married and reveling in the blessing of getting to celebrate with everyone we love. This year, every time I think of Thanksgiving I want to cry. After so many months of infertility purgatory, this year we get to go h

Some hypotheticals: After his lengthy prison term, Harvey Weinstein joins Temple Emanuel and wants to come to services. He says I now get it. I was wrong. Would you sit next to him? We receive a generous check from Jeffrey Epstein to be used by the Temple in any way we wish, and anonymously, no need to publish his gift.  He writes I now get it. I was wrong. Would you accept his gift? After referring his 4.6 million followers to a vile Jew-hating movie that denies the Shoah, and after refusing to apologize for it, and after refusing to state that he has no anti-Semitic beliefs, Kyrie Irving goes on March of the Living. He goes to Auschwitz. He goes to Israel. He comes back and says I now get it. I was wrong. Would you support the Nets reinstating him? Would you now root for him? Is teshuvah always available to right our wrongs? Or do we ever reach a point of no return where teshuvah is not possible? It is a complicated question, and the evidence of the Torah is mixed. Th

This past Monday morning I got both an email and a text from my wife Shira, who was out of town. I knew it was trouble when the first word of both the email and the text was honey. Honey means that she is about to ask me to do something she knows I won’t want to do. Honey, today is Halloween. And I know you just got home from an overnight flight from Israel. But we don’t want to be Scrooge. We don’t want to be the only dark house on our street. So please go to CVS and buy candy, and turn on the lights to let the kids in the neighborhood know that you are so happy to give out the candy on Halloween. XXOO Me. How can I say no to an email that begins with honey and ends with XXOO Me?

We live in an anxious age. If it is hard for you to watch the news, what lenses does our tradition offer to help us make sense of it all? Tomorrow we are going to look at the two models that we are in the middle of reading in shul: Noah, who seeks refuge in his ark, away from the pain of the world (Click here), and Abraham, singled out by God to do justice and righteousness (Click here). The Noah principle is so tempting, and that is where many of us live, in our zip code, worried about the world, but insulated from its harshest features. 02459 and the other zip codes of our congregation are an ark. We can read about the horrors of the world without, for the most part, experiencing them on the front lines. Noah is no child’s story. Noah captures the reality of withdrawal from a world that feels impossible to fix and too painful to face. We do Noah, pretty much every day. But is more expected of us, and if so, what? The Abraham principle is so daunting. The classic question is: why Abraham? What did he do to d

October 29, 2022

Join Sisterhood and the TE community to hear Ed Shapiro speak on the current refugee resettlement crisis: “The Ukranian Refugee Situation and what Americans Can Do”. Edward Shapiro is the Managing Trustee for The Shapiro Foundation, a Boston-based charitable foundation started in 2000 by Ed and his wife and now focusing on community-based refugee resettlement. Ed is also actively involved in many national and international nonprofits involved with refugee matters.

Why Moses’s Final Words Call Out to Us With Special Urgency Right Now This past week, in anticipation of Simchat Torah,  I was drawn to a granular question that I had never thought about before: namely, what are Moses’s very last words before he dies?  The portion we read on Simchat Torah contains Moses’s final farewell speech. He blesses all the tribes of Israel one by one, offering them final words suited to their story. When he is done blessing the last tribe, he has one last thing to say to the Jewish people. What is it? When I examined the text, I was surprised by what I found. Here are his final words: Your enemies shall come cringing before you, And you shall tread on their backs. Deuteronomy 33:29. Curious. Enemies come cringing before you. You shall tread on their backs. What enemies? What does treading on their backs even mean? Rashi, the classic commentator, explains that it means: “Put your feet upon the necks of these enemy kings.” Not what I would have expected.

One of the most evocative figures in the Torah does not get much attention because his brief appearance is embedded in a dry genealogy.  His name is Methuselah. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he begot Lamech. After the birth of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and begot sons and daughters. All the days of Methuselah came to 969 years; then he died. (Genesis 5:25-27). Methuselah is famous for two things. He lived the longest of any biblical figure. Moses lived until 120, Methuselah until 969. But Methuselah is known for nothing beyond his length of years. If he touched somebody’s life, if he made the world better, if he inspired love, the Torah contains no record of it. By contrast, the composer Jonathan Larson, most famous for writing the musical Rent and dying at the age of 35 the night of its first performance, inspired this gorgeous song from Rent, sung by Leslie Odom, Jr. called Without You. (Click here for the video) The thesis is: life goes on, as it

I recently attended a wedding where the bride and groom shared beautiful vows under the chuppah.  Both of their words were poignant, but the bride’s words landed especially powerfully for me. The bride offered that in general she is nervous. She is anxious. She is a worrier.  She is nervous about money. Nervous about her career.  Nervous about where they are going to live, what they are going to do.  Nervous about health.  But, she said, the one thing she has never been nervous about is marrying her beloved.  She always knew that marrying him was just right, a rare oasis in an otherwise anxious world.

Should we be judged on the basis of our finest moments, our worst moments, or our final moments? Do our worst moments vitiate our finest? Or should we properly consider our worst moments part of a complex package of our flawed humanity—but without the power to diminish the good we have also done? Case in point: King Solomon, who starts out so bright, and ends up thoroughly corrupted.

Serendipity. When was the last time that you personally experienced serendipity? Serendipity is defined as something good happening to you accidentally.  The classic case is finding a twenty-dollar bill in the pocket of a coat you haven’t worn in a while. When you find that twenty-dollar bill, you weren’t looking for it, you just find it, it sparks joy, maybe even the feeling that there is some benign force that has our back. But is serendipity limited to something good happening to us accidentally? Is there any way to exercise some agency over serendipity? Is there any way for us to make serendipity happen?

Let’s draft off the energy of Yom Kippur. We are back in person on Shabbat morning. Please join us for coffee, conversation, and community as we discuss a Norman Rockwell Sukkot. One of Norman Rockwell’s classic paintings—it commands its own room in the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Berkshires—is a family Thanksgiving feast entitled Freedom From Want. Follow this link. A family gathered happily together. A turkey ready to be gobbled up. Fine china. Fine stemware. Big smiles. Warmth. Home. Safety. Security. Plenty. There is only one problem. The year of the painting is 1943. America is in the middle of World War II. After Pearl Harbor. Before Omaha Beach. By the way, the Holocaust is happening. How are we to think about this family’s feast in the middle of World War II and the Holocaust? Is their celebration of plenty the right move morally, or the wrong move? What impact should the war and the Shoah have had on their feast? Should they have feasted as if World War II and the

This summer I studied with my 94-year-old father-in-love a classic text that I had encountered before, but seeing it at the age of 61, I saw something I had never seen before, which now seems obvious. We were studying Robert Frost’s poem about being at the crossroads which famously concludes: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. What I picked up this summer is the narrator’s lingering uncertainty, wistfulness, regret, about whether the decision at the crossroads was the right decision. The title jumped out at me this summer: The Road Not Taken.  The sigh jumped out at me: I shall be telling this with a sigh. Maybe I messed up. Maybe I should have taken the road not taken.