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 oy to joy. We want to pivot from oy to joy. But how do we pivot from oy to joy when we still feel oy?

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 and David. Over time a female roster of Ushpizin was also developed inviting Sarah, Rebeca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Deborah and Esther into our Sukkah. The classic idea would be to connect with the spiritual legacy of each of these biblical figures.Now, at Cape Cod, Rabbi Abrahamson did a modern move on this classic mystical tradition. The students were seated in a circle. She added an empty seat in the circle and invited us to welcome into our August sukkah somebody who is not here, either because they passed away, or for any other reason we fell out of touch with them. Each person would go over to the empty chair and introduce a loved one whom we no longer see. It was all very emotional. People carry stories. People carry scars. And this exercise of introducing someone who can no longer be at our Sukkah but whom we would like to invite to our Sukkah brought out a lot of vulnerability in ways that made everyone around the circle listen in rapt attention.

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. But all agree he did the right thing. As we emerge from Yom Kippur to our new year, how do we assess the models presented to us by King David and Joseph? Is it possible to say yes to both? Is it possible to hold out as an ideal both the growth and struggle that come from falling and getting up; and also self-restraint, self-discipline, and consistent moral excellence? Our sacred canon contains both models. Do we?

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 emotionally in hard times. She observed that the world has its sorrows. And so often the sorrows of the world make us sad. We internalize that pain. She asked a simple question: what are some simple hacks that we can do at home, in our everyday life, that will change our mood; that will banish our sorrows; that will make us feel good and hopeful and optimistic.

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 soul that is teshuvah? May Shabbat Shuvah, and the teshuvah we each do in this season, bring us ever closer to the person we hope to become.

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 Moses, and rare people like our 103- and 104-year old friends, get this treatment. Until I read Peter Attia's book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, which makes the case that all of us can be Moses in the sense that all of us have more control than we might think about living richly all the years of our lives.We all know the word lifespan. Lifespan is the number of years we get to live. But Attia taught me a new word: healthspan. Healthspan is the quality of our health—physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, relational—throughout the years of our life. Attia's main point is that what we do now can impact how we live later. What we do in our earlier years can shape not just our lifespan but our healthspan, not just the quantity of our years, but the quality of our years. The habits we live by in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s can dramatically affect the vitality of our 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond. Our current practices shape our future years. And this is a decidedly Jewish issue.

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 me, I said. What did you just say? She said: Buck up buttercup.In our 42 years together, Shira had never put those three words together, ever. I had never heard them before. I wasn't exactly sure what Buck up buttercup meant, but it did not sound like the kind of sympathy I was looking for. It sounded like she was saying: toughen up. Stop complaining. The bad news was that I did not get the sympathy I was looking for. The good news is I got something even better: a sermon topic. Is it a Jewish virtue not to complain, or is it a Jewish virtue to complain? There is a lot of Torah on complaints and complaining, and it is nuanced.

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 children ever to apply all the provisions of this Teaching. (Deut. 29:28)What does this verse mean, and why is it inserted here, in between the expulsion of the Israelites caused by the wrath of God, and the gift of teshuvah which will allow the Israelites to return to God and to their land?What does the Torah's treatment of teshuvah mean to how we practice it now?One possibility is that the Israelites failed deeply and have teshuvah to redeem them. So too, we fail deeply, and we have teshuvah to redeem us. The Talmud teaches that somebody who sins, who fails, who grapples, who goes through a transformation and comes back to God is at a higher level than somebody who never sinned.Over the next several weeks, we will double click on this teaching. Does our tradition really privilege transformation (I strayed, I sinned, I have come back) over a pure heart (I am disciplined, I am committed to being ethical, I did not stray)?Over the next several weeks we will examine the case for the primacy of transformation versus the case for the primacy of a pure heart.

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; and leaves behind families and communities that will never be the same. Each life taken is an infinite tragedy.And then, on Wednesday, at Utah Valley University, political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated. He leaves behind a wife, two young children, and family and friends who are bereft that a31-year-old is no more, the victim of political violence. Charlie Kirk's murder is an infinite tragedy. Tonight is Selikhot, the beginning of our High Holiday season. How do we understand this violence, and what are we to do about it? Of course we decry it. We denounce it. We mourn it. We lament it. But is there anything we can do about it?

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 Absalom! O my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! O Absalom, my son, my son!” Infinite love. Infinite care. No control. Infinite pain. So many of us experience our own version of the pain of Daedalus and David. Our loved ones make decisions that we cannot control that undermine their lives and cause us pain. As we enter the High Holiday season tomorrow night with Selikhot, part of the pain we carry into the High Holidays are the times that our loved ones are their own worst enemies, which we can do absolutely nothing about. Is there a prayer that helps? Tomorrow we will look at the most responsive prayer that I know of on this question, The Serenity Prayer:  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. Would that prayer have helped Daedalus as he buried Icarus? Would that prayer have helped King David as he mourned his son Absalom? Does that prayer help us? When our loved ones undermine their own lives, is serenity even possible?

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 William Carlos Williams and W.H. Auden. The last stanza of Williams's poem expresses this dissonance so clearly:a splash quite unnoticedthis was Icarus drowningThe painting, and the poetry of Williams and Auden, convey the world as it is: a splash quite unnoticed. Judaism has a lot to say here. Hillel's famous teaching in Pirkei Avot is a response. Hillel would not be comfortable with the three peasants not seeing and not caring. Yes, they have their own lives to attend to. That is legitimate. But Icarus drowned. How could they not notice? In attempting to move the dial on human indifference, Hillel teaches: If I am not for me, who will be?If I am for myself alone, what am I?And if not now, when?(Pirkei Avot 1:14) This dialectic of Hillel animates our High Holiday liturgy. Take a look at Bruegel's masterpiece. Who are the three peasants today? Who is Icarus today? Where are we in the paining? Who and what are we not seeing? What are we focused on? What is our version of plowing, herding and fishing? What does Hillel say to us?

August 30, 2025

Inheritance – A Personal Journey of Discovery and Choice. We have no control over what we are bequeathed. Or do we?Rabbi Jamie Kotler teaches Torah and Jewish texts at synagogue communities in the Boston area and beyond. She has served as chaplain at Fireman House (Hebrew Senior Life), and has served on the Boards of The Rashi School, and Mayyim Hayyim, and on the building committee for Newbridge on the Charles at Hebrew Senior Life.Rabbi Kotler grew up in Brazil and Mexico, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, with little religious practice or knowledge. She began studying Torah as a young mother of three. Her desire to steep herself in the texts and traditions she had missed as a child led her to enter rabbinical school at the age of 54 and was ordained by the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in June 2016. Before entering the rabbinate, she was a computer programmer (EDS, TX and Hewlett-Packard, CA), a financial analyst (Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, CA), and a consultant to small businesses.Rabbi Kotler holds a BA in Biology from Brown University and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She is married to Harold Kotler, and together they have five grown children and four grandchildren.

Rabbi Rachel Silverman (she/her) first joined the Camp Ramah New England staff as a Rosh Edah (unit head) at the overnight camp from 2005-2010. Many years later, she's thrilled to be back as the Director of Ramah Boston, our newest day camp. Rabbi Silverman previously served as a congregational rabbi in both Brookline and Sharon, MA, after receiving her ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2010. When she is not at camp, she is a ceramic artist and enjoys biking, cooking, and gardening. She lives in Sharon, MA, with her husband Josh, their three kids (Anna, Danny, and Benjamin), dog (Abby).

August 8, 2025

On January 15, 1997, Princess Diana walked through a minefield in Angola.The background for her walk was the civil war in Angola that raged for 27 years, from 1975 through 2002, which meant that she was walking through a minefield while the war was still going on. When Angola secured its independence from Portugal, a civil war broke out between a Communist faction supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and an anti-Communist faction supported by the United States. The war was not only long but deadly, resulting in 500,000 to 800,000 deaths of civilians and soldiers; and the displacement of 4 million refugees.The war also left Angola infected with landmines which meant that on any given day, with a blue sky overhead, a person in the wrong place at the wrong time could step on a mine and be maimed or killed. In fact, although the war ended in 2002, since 2008, 60,000 innocent people have been killed or maimed by land mines.So in 1997, Princess Diana walked through a minefield in Angola for two purposes: one, to raise awareness and urgency to clear the mines in Angola; and two, to create an international treaty that land mines no longer be used in war. Her goal was to have a “mine-free world.”Princess Diana's walk was highly successful. In Angola over 120,000 landmines have been cleared since her walk. Land that used to be uninhabitable because of mines is now used for homes, schools and businesses. And, within a year of her walk, 164 nations signed the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines, leading to a halt in their production and to the destruction of stockpiles. Real progress.You might think that with such dramatic success, the only reason for her children to ever go back to Angola would be to celebrate the mine-free world their mother had dreamed of. Sadly that is not the case. Just two weeks ago, on July 16 to be exact, twenty-eight years after his mother first walked through a minefield, Princess Diana's son Prince Harry was back in Angola walking through minefields. Why now?

I'm sure you're familiar with the saying: “curiosity killed the cat.” We say it when curiosity leads us down an unproductive or even dangerous path. However, in a fascinating interview with Professor Tal ben Shahar, an expert in the field of positive psychology, he offers this wonderful line: “curiosity might have killed the cat, but it keeps us alive.” Curiosity, says this prominent researcher, is one of the great secrets of happiness. It ensures that even when we're alone, we're not bored. But also, says ben Shahar, being curious about others brings new relationships, can help mend broken ones and deepens connections.About Rabbi Sonia SaltzmanRabbi Sonia Saltzman is currently serving as Rabbinic Advisor for Graduate Students at Boston University Hillel. She has taught at various synagogue communities, including Temple Emanuel (Newton), Kerem Shalom (Concord) and Newbridge on the Charles (Dedham). Rabbi Saltzman was Senior Rabbi at Temple Ohabei Shalom, Brookline from 2011-2018 and from 2008-2011 she served as the rabbi of Sha'arei Shalom, Ashland.Rabbi Saltzman was ordained in 2008 as part of the first graduating class of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College. During Rabbinical School, she held student pulpits at Temple Emanuel in Newton and at Temple Aliyah in Needham, completed chaplaincy training at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and served as faculty for the Bronfman Youth Fellowship Program in Israel. Prior to entering the rabbinate, Rabbi Saltzman worked in the field of micro-finance at ACCION International as head of the Financial Services Department, extending credit to small businesses in the developing world. She also worked in Bank of Boston's Project Finance Department and taught in its Loan Officer Development Program. Rabbi Saltzman is a graduate of Tufts University (BA in Political Science) and holds a Masters Degree in International Affairs (Columbia University) and a Masters Degree in Bible and Jewish Thought (Brandeis University).She is married to Dr. Ned Saltzman, a urologist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and has two grown sons, Benjamin and Gabriel.

July 19, 2025The most amazing article appeared in the New York Times this week titled “The Tooth Fairy is Real. She's a Dentist in Seattle.” No seriously, I am not making this up. Apparently twenty years ago, when Purva Merchant was applying for dental school, her boyfriend set up an email account for her using her nickname “the tooth fairy.” Ever since, she has received somewhere between three to five emails per day from desperate parents and adorable, sometimes disbelieving children. And she has personally responded to each and every message.The article is full of amazing email exchanges. There is the letter from the mother who forgot to exchange a tooth two nights in a row, who writes to the tooth fairy to let her know that there has been a misunderstanding and to ask if she could stop by while her son was at school. There is the letter from the child who received $100 for her first tooth, but then a much lower sum for each subsequent tooth and is very upset at the injustice of it—shouldn't teeth all be worth the same amount of money?! And then, just some adorable little notes:“My tooth got pullen out at the dentist today and I am excited for you to cone to my house and give me a surprise for being a brave girl.I am sleeping in my mums bed tonight and my tooth is silver so you can zee it and it's under the black pillow and it's in a dog box wrapped in a tissue”and“I'm so sorry I swallowed my tooth. And I love you. XXX OOO”Reading these letters stole my heart. I love the whimsy of every exchange. The parents who, long before the advent of AI, were emailing random tooth fairy addresses in the hopes that somewhere, somehow, someone would save them and preserve the magic of the tooth fairy for their child. I love the image of parents sitting down to help their children write to “the tooth fairy” only to receive a real response in exchange. Can you imagine the squeals of joy?! The fact that these letters are all written by a pediatric dentist makes it even better.

When she was six years old, Erin Paisan fell in love not only with Camp Mystic in the Hill Country of Texas. She specifically fell in love with the Guadalupe River, which was the life force, the energy, the joy, of Camp Mystic. Decades later she still remembers with perfect clarity the very moment when she fell in love with the river. As she told the story to the New York Times Daily host Michael Barbaro, she and her mother were picking up her brother from a nearby camp. Six-year-old Erin saw the girls of Camp Mystic playing, splashing, smiling, in the Guadalupe River. She turned to her mother and said: “I want to go to that camp.”It was far from inevitable that she would be able to go. Camp Mystic is a century-old camp. Generations of the same family would go, m'dor l'dor, from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Erin's family was not a generational family. And they were not, in her own words, an elite family. Her parents were divorced. Her father was not in the picture. And yet somehow, she was accepted at Camp Mystic, which she joyfully attended from ages 10 to 16. She loved Camp Mystic so deeply as a child that every year she packed her trunk in December. She loves Camp Mystic so deeply as an adult that she has instructed her family, when she passes, to have her remains spread at the camp.She loved that all the girls got a fresh start. Nobody knew or cared how rich they were, how big their house was, what kind of reputation they had at school. In the regular year, Erin Paisan was the child of divorce without a dad who was seen as a geek, in her words. But not at Camp Mystic.She shared that when her husband can't sleep, what centers him is thinking about golfing 18 holes at his favorite golf course. When Erin can't sleep, what centers her is thinking about the river at Camp Mystic.But wait a minute. Didn't that river at Camp Mystic flood last weekend, claiming a heartbreaking number of innocent lives and leaving a heartbreaking number of devastated families? How could Erin Paisan find calm by thinking about the river at Camp Mystic?But the problem is deeper than that. While the flooding of the river last weekend was by far the worst and most catastrophic, it has not been the only flooding. There was also flooding in 1978, when Erin herself was a camper. She remembers being moved to higher ground and going two days without food because the waters were so turbulent that counselors could not safely bring the hungry campers the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then there was a flooding of the Guadalupe River again in 1987 which had deadly consequences.With all that loss, with all that tragedy, how could Erin Paisan still love the river? This question gets at a deeper question. What does it mean to love deeply? What does it mean to love deeply a person? A place? Our nation? Our homeland?

July 5, 2025

June 28, 2025

AJ Helman (they/them/theirs) is an educator and artist with a focus on Jewish and LGBTQ+ theater and education. After graduating from Emerson College with a BFA in Theater Education and Performance, AJ remained in Boston, working in the local theater and film industries as both an artist and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion liaison. As part of their activism and educator work, they facilitated workshops on gender diversity in theater and spearheaded better inclusion practices for transgender employees in the film industry thanks to the support of Ryan Reynolds' and Blake Lively's Group Effort Initiative. AJ proudly marched with Keshet at San Francisco Pride directly following the Supreme Court's overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act, effectively making LGBTQ+ marriage in the United States legal. In addition to their activism and artistry, AJ is thrilled to be a part of the Temple Emanuel staff as the Ritual Coordinator.

How did you sleep on Thursday night? When I first learned that Israel's war with Iran had begun in earnest, I, like so many of you, did not sleep much at all. Because of the 7-hour time difference between Boston and Israel, in the early hours of Friday morning I was able to reach Micah Goodman, our beloved teacher and friend who lives in Kfar Adumim, twenty minutes outside of Jerusalem. What Micah had to say was both inspiring and concerning at the same time.First the inspiring part. Micah shared that Israel's attack on June 13 exceeded its wildest dreams. As Micah put it, the start of the war was all of Israel's best military victories—the Six Day War, Entebbe, the destruction of Iraq's nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981, the exploding pagers that crippled Hezbollah—all at once. Using intelligence, covert operations, Mossad agents on the ground in Iran and drone technology, Israel was able to eliminate Iran's leading generals and nuclear scientists in their homes, in their beds, in targeted attacks, in which Israel did not also kill their families. Why were Iran's leading generals and nuclear scientists at home, in the first place? Why weren't they in a bunker? Micah answers his own question by observing that we cannot prepare for something that has never before happened in history. What Israel accomplished on June 13 had never before been accomplished in the history of war, the kind of chutzpah, planning, skill and savvy that allowed these targeted assassinations. Add to that Israeli fighter jets that evaded Iranian air defenses, allowing Israel to attack more than 100 sites. Micah observed that Israel's morale is very high.But there is a but. Micah and his wife and their teen-age daughters, like so many Israeli families, spent their night in a bunker. Shul throughout Israel has been cancelled. Micah's public lectures for next week have been cancelled. All public events have been cancelled. Since the airport is closed, Israelis are worrying about food. Where will their food come from? Israel imports much of its food supply. He went to the grocery store on Friday morning, worried about whether his family will have enough food, and the store was jam-packed with nervous grocery shoppers, and the shelves were largely empty.So there is edge in Israel. Iran remains formidable. The Houthis remain formidable. There still is Hamas. There still is Hezbollah. While the beginning of the war could not have gone any better, where it will go next, nobody knows. There is what Micah calls “radical uncertainty” about what this war will mean for Israel's future and for the region.What do we do with this complex picture? How do we understand and respond to it? What does it mean to us? What does it ask from us?

I called my brother-in-law Ari this morning in Jerusalem. He and his family spent the night in their bunker. Two of their sons have been mobilized yet again. He shared one story that speaks to this moment.This morning (Friday is typically a day off for many Israelis, kind of like our Sunday, though it is spent getting ready for Shabbat) a friend of theirs has a daughter who was go get married. She had a dress. She had a groom. She had a venue. She had a guest list. She had a caterer. She had a mazel-dick day, 6/13, June 13, which corresponds to the number of mitzvot in our tradition. 613 embodies a fullness of hope and experience.The wedding was cancelled. For now. How do we process Israel's existential war with Iran? What texts from our canon speak to this moment? What can we do to support Israel now?

June 7, 2025

How do we know when an old era ends? How do we know when a new era begins? Is that happening to us now? Do we now live in an era where we might be going about an ordinary day and be attacked becausewe are Jewish, the attacker shouting “Free Palestine.” It happened in Pennsylvania to the Governor of the State. While Governor Josh Shapiro, his wife Lori, their four children, two dogs, and another family were inside their home, their home was firebombed on April 13, hours after the family had hosted a Passover seder. The suspect set the fire using Molotov cocktails and did so, in his own words, because Governor Shapiro needed to “stop having my friends killed,” and that he, the suspect, “will not take part in his (Governor Shapiro's) plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” It happened in Washington D.C. to a young couple about to be engaged. Yaron Lischinsky, age 30, had planned to propose to Sarah Milgrim, age 26, in Jerusalem, but they were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21. The suspect shouted: “Free, free Palestine” upon his arrest. It happened in Boulder Colorado. On June 1, a man shouting “Free Palestine” threw Molotov cocktails at a group of Jews who were rallying for Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Among the 15 people injured was an 88-year old Holocaust survivor. The suspect stated that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.” How do we process this? What does it mean to us and to the American Jewish community? Since October 7, every Hartman podcast of Israel at War has been about Israel at war. But the most recent podcast, for the first time, is not about Israel. It is about the Jewish people. It is entitled the War Against the Jews. Donniel and Yossi do a De Tocqueville for the American Jewish community. Their point: American Jewry is entering a new era, what they call the “normalization” of Jew hatred, and the “Europeanization" of American Jewry. It is not about the absolute number of haters. It is about the fear that, at any moment, a deranged hater might shout “Free Palestine” while attacking us. That fear fuels terrorism. Which means that terrorism has come home to us, where we live and breathe. If it has happened in Pennsylvania to the Governor, in Washington, and in hip, cool Boulder to Jews asking that hostages get released, why not us? Is this a scary new era? If so, how do we respond? Can we imagine a different and better future, and if so, what do we do to bring about that better future?

June 3, 2025

Beyond all Consolation: A Jewish Philosophy of Redemption and TragedyRabbi Jason Rubenstein joined Harvard Hillel as Executive Director on June 1, 2024 after six years as the Howard M. Holtzman Jewish Chaplain at Yale. Jason's background is as diverse as Harvard's Jewish community: a childhood at Temple Micah in Washington DC, formative years studying at Yeshivat Ma'ale Gilboa in northern Israel, and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. From 2010-2018, Jason taught on the faculty of the Hadar Institute, where he created classrooms, conversations, and communities that bring Torah into an open-ended dialogue with the fullness of students' lives.From his own formative undergraduate years at Harvard Hillel, where he met his wife, Arielle Rubenstein ‘07, Jason knows how Hillel can and should transform students' lives – and through them, American Jewish life. For a fuller view of Jason's plan for Harvard Hillel's future, you can listen to his interview with Yehuda Kurtzer (PhD ‘08).View his full bio here

I am not a huge fan of rom coms. But there was one rom com I just had to see the minute I heard about it. I was drawn to its title. Its title was irresistible. Its title conveyed the central problem in the Book of Numbers. Its title conveyed one of the central challenges in our own lives. The title of this rom com is Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.Jane Austen wrecked my life. Let's dwell on that. Some other person wrecked my life. Some external person or event or disappointment wrecked my life. If my life is not what I want it to be, there is somebody or something else to blame. How often are we tempted to say our own version of Jane Austen wrecked my life? We've all heard, or said, different versions of this.My parents wrecked my life. I still remember the time I came home with an examination where I got a 98. And they said: what happened to the other two points? I still remember the time I came home with my report card. All As and one A-minus. And they said: A-minus?Or: My parents wrecked my life. I was always a creative type. I dreamed of becoming a singer. A writer. An actor. But my parents threw cold water on my dreams: “How are you going to make ends meet,” they would say. “Do you have any idea how many unemployed singers, writers and actors there are,” they would say. They pressured me to become an accountant. I work at Price Waterhouse as an auditor. I am not living my dream. Parents are frequently the target of Jane Austen wrecked my life energy, but there are plenty of other targets.My boss who had it in for me wrecked my life. My co-worker who betrayed me wrecked my life.My business partner who cheated me wrecked my life. My teacher who gave me an unfair grade wrecked my life.My doctor who failed to diagnose and treat my condition properly wrecked my life.In each case, the narrative could well be accurate. The feelings could well be valid. Parents did say: where are the other two points? The boss did have it in for you. Your business partner did cheat you. The doctor did not treat your medical condition properly. But here's the problem: Even if the claim that Jane Austen wrecked my life has some basis, does this energy serve us? Does this energy help us? Or does this energy consign us to a doom loop of reliving past frustration?

The Talmud has a famous story from Menachot 29B that invites us to confront three hard truths that we would rather not think about. Our mortality. The limited reach of our legacy. And the unredeemed nature of our world—we will live, and we will pass, with the world's big problems unsolved. Why this story now? It is Erev Shavuot, the eve of our receiving the Torah. This story is about the nature of Torah; our life and legacy; and the relationship between our Torah, our life, our legacy and the world. If this story is true, how do we make peace with it? Is it possible to make peace with it? We will examine this unsettling story through the lens of two great thinkers, Harold Kushner and Jim Collins. How does the Torah we will receive on this Shavuot affect how we think about our life, legacy, and relationship to an unredeemed world?

Following the March of the Living trip, Cantor Rosemberg remained in Israel to volunteer and perform with 25 Latin American cantors. Listen to learn about Cantor Rosemberg's incredibly meaningful and moving experience!

Standards. Is there an elegant theory for when to enforce them and when to choose not to enforce them? Parents face this question all the time. We have standards in our home! But our children do their own thing that flies in the face of our standards. Do we enforce the standard, or let it go? Synagogues face this question all the time. To celebrate a Bar/Bat Mitzvah in our community, a family is expected to fulfill certain requirements, like attending Shabbat services a certain number of times. What do we do when a family does not comply with those standards? Do we enforce the standard, or let it go? Employers face this question all the time. Post-pandemic employers have rules about in person attendance—e.g., three times a week in person. When an employee does not meet that standard, is the employer to enforce the standard, or let it go? We also face this question of standards in larger contexts: our love of America, our love of Israel. We have standards for the kind of conduct we would expect to see in a democracy and in a Jewish homeland. When those standards are seemingly not met, what do we do? Are standards mere suggestions? Do standards have teeth? Does violating standards have consequences? Our study tomorrow will focus on a standard that could not be more clear or more explicit—priests with defects cannot officiate—and it comes from our most authoritative source, the Torah in the voice of God. (In halakhic terminology, it is called a deoreita command).The Lord spoke further to Moses: Speak to Aaron and say: No man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God. No one at all who has a defect shall be qualified….No man among the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the Lord's gift; having a defect, he shall not be qualified to offer the food of his God. Leviticus 21: 17 and 21.Yet, in the face of this crystal-clear rule, repeated four times, the Talmud chooses not to enforce this standard in all cases, and offers multiple cases where priests with visible defects were nonetheless allowed to officiate. What do we learn from the Talmud about when we might choose to enforce, and when we might choose not to enforce, our standards? To what extent do our personal relationships with people who do not meet the standard but we nonetheless love matter? To what extent does the community's actual practice matter especially when it ignores the standard?

Fifty-three years ago, on March 31, 1972, the Soviet Union launched a spacecraft that was supposed to go to Venus. But it never made it to Venus. Some malfunction in the rocket prevented it from leaving the earth's orbit. The Soviets named this spacecraft Cosmos 482—which became code in Soviet lexicon for epic failure. For 53 years, the spacecraft that could never make it to Venus circled the earth. Year after year never getting to where it was meant to go. Year after year stuck in a perpetual orbit. But it turns out that every year it lost a little bit of height in its orbital wanderings so that, last Saturday, on Shabbos, Cosmos 482 could finally find rest. Last Saturday, Cosmos 482 fell back to the earth, into the sea, without causing harm to people or property.I am not a space person. I don't follow NASA. But the minute I heard this crazy story, I thought to myself: There is a sermon in that! Because what happened to Cosmos 482 happens to every one of us in our own way.

Loving critics. The phrase feels like an oxymoron. In fact it is a willed double entendre. Perhaps it means that critics are loving. Their words of critique flow from a place of love. In fact, they feel that suppressing their critique, going along to get along, would undermine that which they love. Perhaps loving critics means that people who are not critics should nonetheless love and appreciate people who are critics. Perhaps they have something to say that we and others need to hear. Should we become loving critics? If we have never before been fans of critics, should we reevaluate and gain a new respect for loving critics? Perhaps loving critics might be helpful for this current fraught moment in America and in Israel.  Tomorrow we will examine three sources from two thinkers. Elana Stein Hain recently taught the two texts we will encounter from Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago from the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, to a CJP Mission in Israel. And Larry Bacow wrote a piece in Harvard Magazine entitled Loving Critics, from which the title of this class comes. How do we love the lands we love in their winter of discontent? Complicated.

Adina Vogel Ayalon – an Israeli citizen who has lived and raised a family in Israel and worked for decades toward building peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians – and Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz are uniquely positioned to unpack some of the difficult questions facing our communities today, including:How can American Jews most effectively advocate to bring about the return of the hostages, sideline Hamas and promote a peaceful and safe future for Israeli and Palestinian families alike?What constitutes anti-semitism on campus and how can we best combat it?How should our community encourage the US government to address Iran's nuclear ambitions and support of terrorism throughout the region?How would the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel affect Israel's security?

May 10, 2025

Last week we encountered one kind of “imperfect peace,” to use the term coined by our teacher, Sara Labaton of Hartman: shalom bayit, domestic harmony, made possible by a lack of transparency in a marriage. We read the ruling of Ovadia Yosef that a wife not disclose the fact of her abortion before she had met her husband so that their marriage could continue.This week we encounter another complicated rabbinic category of imperfect peace: mipnei darchei shalom, the things we do for the sake of peace. Tomorrow morning we will encounter the Talmudic teaching that encourages Jews to be nice to gentiles: to bury their dead, to visit their sick, and to provide financial support to their poor, for the sake of peaceful relations. Is that transactional or relational? Is that practical or admirable? Is that aspirational or calculated? We will compare the Talmudic teachings of mipnei darchei shalom to Donniel Hartman's most frequently taught text about a person who does the right thing just because it is the right thing to do, without calculating any benefit, and in fact losing out financially by doing so.Is local peace, whether transactional or relational, an adequate response to a world on fire?

A woman in Israel approached her rabbi with the following dilemma. When she was a younger woman, she was not religious. She had relations with a man and got pregnant. She had an abortion. She then became religious. She did teshuvah, repentance. She committed herself to learning Torah, doing mitzvot and joining an observant community. She moved to a new town, where she was not known, met a young yeshiva student who did not know about her past. She did not tell him. They got married. She got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy. Her husband wanted them to do a special ritual ceremony called pidyon haben, redemption of the first born, where they thank God for the gift of their first-born. Under Jewish law, however, the family could not do this ceremony because of her prior abortion, which the husband did not know about. So this wife and new mother approaches her local rabbi to ask: Should she now tell her husband about her past, that she had had an abortion, and that this baby was not eligible for this ritual? Doing so would have spared her husband from saying a prayer at the ritual that he should not have said, a ritual infraction known as a berakhah le'vatala, a blessing made in vain? But doing so might also have endangered their marriage. Or should she permit her husband to say a blessing in vain which would preserve the marriage and family peace, even though doing so perpetuates the omission?

Sara Labaton, the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, recently taught a group of local rabbis. She observed that the prophetic ideals of peace (lion lies down the with lamb, nations will beat swords into ploughshares, neither will they know war anymore) are so lofty as to be unattainable. Would we be better off looking towards rabbinic ideals of peace?The good news for rabbinic ideals of peace: not lofty. Not utopian.The bad news: rabbinic ideals of peace are small, local, and very imperfect.On Shabbat we will consider a fascinating source about a most imperfect, indeed troubling peace. Three things about this source are striking.One the genre. It is sheilah u'teshuva, a legal question and answer, a responsum. Not a genre we have studied before.Two, the author is Ovadia Yosef, zichrono livracha, who was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the Sephardi community in Israel and throughout the world. He was incredibly learned and inspired passionate devotion among his followers. When he died in 2013, 800,000 people attended his funeral, the largest funeral in the history of Israel.Three, the fact pattern. A young woman has sex outside of marriage, gets pregnant, and has an abortion. Later, she becomes very observant, marries a yeshiva bocher, gets pregnant, has a baby boy. She never tells her husband about her abortion. When their child is born, the husband wants to do a ceremony called pidyon haben, the redemption of the first-born boy. Since she had had an abortion, she was not eligible for the pidyon haben. But he did not know. Would it be better to tell the truth, and not have the pidyon haben? Or to perpetuate the omission, and have the pidyon haben that she was not eligible to have, in which case the ceremony would contain a blessing that should not have been said?Read this short, saucy case. What did Ovadia Yosef decide? Why? Do you agree with his decision? How would you assess pros and cons? What do we learn from his decision that could apply to our very different world?Is an imperfect peace worth pursuing? Is local peace an adequate response to a world on fire?

God is always confusing. We never know what to think. But that is especially true now in this fraught theological season between commemorating the Shoah (April 24), honoring soldiers who fell in Israel's wars and victims of terrorism on Yom Hazikaron (April 30), and celebrating the birth of the State of Israel on om Ha'atzmaut (May 1). Tomorrow we are going to study a modern Jewish philosopher that we have never before studied, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who came up with a new scheme: the Three Eras of Jewish History.It is new. It is thoughtful. It is engaging. It gives us what to talk about.But does it work? After all, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel happened within three years of one another, very much in the same era.We will also look at the special insertions in our Amidah for Yom Hashoah and Yom Ha'atzmaut to see what statement they make on God's relationship to the Jewish people and to history in 1941-45 and in 1948. We will also examine an important text from the Talmud that shows our sense of God's presence or absence is very much affected by what is actually happening in the world. Spoiler alert: it's not about the answers. There are none. It's about the wrestling. One other alternative: Who needs God? Since there are no answers, since the wrestling never leads to an answer, are we better off if God is not all that important to us—which, by the way, is what the vast majority of Temple Emanuel members will say about how they actually lead their lives. “I'm not a God person. I am here for the community.” Maybe that is the wisest posture of all?

Led by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

What happens when we lose our loved ones before we lose them? This happens to so many of our families. Our loved one experiences a slow decline, cognitively, or physically, that takes place over years that feels like forever. The decline crowds out earlier chapters.Our mother has not been herself for so long I can't even remember what she used to be like.It's been so long since my father was who he really was, I can't remember him before his dementia set in.What do we do with this pain when we lose our loved ones before we lose them?We are about to say Yizkor. Yizkor offers us a poignant way to flip the script.It is true that we sometimes lose our loved ones before we lose them. But because of Yizkor, it is also true that after we lose our loved ones, we still have them.