Podcasts about gardenswartz

In this episode Lance and Jacklyn revisit their most recent trip to Vegas.  Jacklyn delves into the details and behind the scenes insight into a comedy special taping. This is a fun one filled with lots of recommendations and ideas for getting the most out of Vegas!

Within the last few weeks, something has happened to give me a new lease on life. A new glide in my stride. We are all looking for hope and energy, and I got mine from an unexpected source: the release of Beyonce's new album of country music, Cowboy Carter, in particular one incredible song, a duet with Miley Cyrus called II Most Wanted. I have listened to this song easily 100 times in the last few weeks. I listen to it in the kitchen when I am doing dishes. I listen to it in the family room when I am folding laundry. I listen to it in the gym when I am working out. I listen to it in my bedroom when I am getting dressed. Shira thinks that listening to the same song 100 times is excessive. Can you believe that? Every time she walks into a room where the song is playing, she says: again? I love this song for so many reasons. Beyonce's voice is beautiful, Miley Cyrus's voice is beautiful, and their voices together are beyond gorgeous. I love this song because the melody is also gorgeous. But mostly I love this song because of its message.

I want to start with something lovely, a little bit of serendipity. I meet from time to time with a good friend to catch up. This friend has a tradition, after our conversations, of giving me a book to read. He is a big reader, a person of ideas. So often he gives me a new book, usually hard cover, that just came out, and that he had read right away. But on this last occasion, for reasons I do not know, he gave me a book off his shelf, a used book, a paperback that he had read long ago. The book is called Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom, who had achieved fame with Tuesdays With Morrie. I love the title. I would love to have a little faith. At first I wondered whether this book could possibly speak to our world today. It came out in 2009. That is not only 15 years ago. That is a different universe ago. All the places that I love: America, Israel, Harvard, the Jewish community in North America, were so different back then. Could a book written before October 7, before Israel's longest war, before the scary rise of anti-Semitism, before the toxic division in our own country, could such a book speak to us now?

The IDF has an intelligence unit whose name does not exactly roll off the tongue. It is called Terrain Analysis, Accurate Mapping, Visual Collection and Interpretation Agency. As Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in their new book The Genius of Israel, which came out on November 7, 2023, the job of this intelligence unit is to analyze millions of details in millions of images gathered by Israeli satellites, airplanes and drones For example, if the war in Lebanon happens, Israel would need to send paratroopers into enemy territory. How do they get resupplied with food and other essentials? Israeli technology has captured millions of images which have to be interpreted for the light it sheds on where food and drink might be found. While this unit uses computers and algorithms to help process all this big data, computers only get you so far. Human beings need to read and analyze the data. The challenge is that this work is extremely tedious and painstaking. Another word might be boring. It takes an unusual capacity for patience and attention to detail. It's not a job for everyone. But Israel has figured out a way to solve this problem. The title of the book is the genius of Israel, and Israel's solution is genius. Israel has created a special unit filled by Israeli soldiers who are neurodiverse. Pairing autistic soldiers with this elite intelligence unit is a win win. It is a win for the IDF because these neurodiverse soldiers have the smarts and patience to interpret millions of details in millions of images. And it is a win for these soldiers and their families. Serving in the IDF is a badge of honor. Not being able to serve is stigmatizing. Pairing neurodiverse soldiers with a special unit that utilizes their distinctive intelligence gives these young soldiers a feeling of accomplishment, of being needed and valued. And it also gives them analytical skills that they can use when their army service is over.

I have been thinking a lot about something that many of us—not all, but many—have in common: brothers and sisters.  I have been in a deep brother and sister place this week for two reasons. I am the youngest of six children.  My five older siblings live in different places. Two live in Los Angeles, one in New Jersey, one in Denver, and my sister Jill and I live in Newton.  This past Monday night, for a brief, incredibly sweet, totally-to-be-cherished nano second, we were all in the same place together, Brooklyn, for the wedding of Jill and Steve's son Ari to his wife Esther.  Between geographical challenges, health challenges, Covid, and life, the six of us don't get a chance to see one another altogether in the same place nearly as much as we would like.  The last time all six of us were together was at another nephew's wedding in Denver before the pandemic.  So it felt incredibly special, and rare. And, just as we were dancing at Ari and Esther's wedding, my brothers on Shira's side of the family, Ari in Jerusalem, Daniel in Atlanta, and I were concluding saying Kaddish for our father after the 11 months.  Every morning, and every evening, in Jerusalem, Atlanta, and Temple Emanuel, we said Kaddish for our father, and it was deeply meaningful that we were doing so together in our respective cities.  This past Tuesday we said our last Kaddish.   Sharing the wedding and the Kaddish with brothers and sisters made me think about the special blessing, and special challenge, of brothers and sisters. A deep paradox lies at the heart of the sibling relationship.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then a screen shot I saw this week conveys a truth that we need to reckon with.  The screen shot shows the different realities of New York City and Israel on New Year's Eve.  New York:  fireworks. Israel: taking fire, the glare of missiles and rockets that Hamas still manages to fire into Israel.  New York: people on the streets, reveling, counting down in anticipation, 5-4-3-2-1, Happy New Year! Israel, another night in the bomb shelter? What do we do with this asymmetry? 

October 21, 2023

How many of you have seen the play or the movie Golda's Balcony?  If you have, you know about that powerful moment, early in her career for Israel, she is Golda Meyerson at the time, it is January, 1948, it is three years after the Shoah, it is five months before Israel's independence would be declared and the war for independence would start, and Golda is with American Jews, at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations, held in Chicago on January 21.  Her mission was to inspire American Jews to support the incipient Jewish state and the Jewish army in the war for its very existence.  She was supposed to raise $25 million.  She ended up raising $50 million.  Make no mistake.  This is our Golda moment.  Golda's secret sauce contained three ingredients.  They apply to us with equal force. First, American Jews in 1948 learned of horrors and atrocities, murder and death, that befell innocent Jews of Europe.  Slaughter.  It made American Jews angry, sick to their stomach, nauseous, worried, grief-stricken, and determined to fight back. Check.  American Jews in 2023 woke up last Shabbat morning, and every day and every sleepless night, through our insomnia, through the pits in our stomachs, we read stories that claim us, stories of horrors and atrocities, murder and death, that befell innocent Jews in the towns and villages near Gaza.  By the way, none of these areas were settlements.  None of these areas could in any remote way be called occupied lands.  None of these areas carry moral complexity.  These were indisputably and properly Jewish communities whose Jews, celebrating Simchat Torah, celebrating a peaceful music festival were slaughtered precisely because they are Jews living in Israel. There was a second secret sauce to Golda's success:  American Jews in 1948 knew that if Jews were to make good on their promise of Never Again, we would have to create, sustain, and defend the State of Israel. Europe was a killing field for Jews. Part of the infinite tragedy of the Simchat Torah massacre was that Israel also became a killing field for Jews; and that peaceful Kibbutzim and villages were soaked through with Jewish blood.  The Kishinev pogrom came to Israel.  It was not supposed to be that way. Hatred of the Jewish people continues in these shores.  Elias and Lorena are in New York, with Mikey at Columbia for a freshmen parents' weekend.  But in our Talmud conversation yesterday, Elias shared that on Thursday night Mikey called him and Lorena and was very rattled.  New York, and Columbia, have a significant Jewish population. You would think in the week that Hamas had committed these atrocities, Columbia would be a safe space where Jewish students could protest.  Two hundred Jewish students showed up.  But there was a counter protest of 700 Palestinian students and sympathizers.  Campus police were so concerned about the safety of Jewish students at Columbia that they were whisked away to the Kraft Hillel Building, where the 200 students could continue their protest, in private, behind locked doors. What? How could it be? How could it be that 700 people at Columbia University, or the Harvard students that signed that odious statement, would walk with Hamas?  The American Jews to whom Golda spoke knew what we now must also know: that evil is real, hatred is real, and if never again was to be real, it would take a partnership between Israeli Jews and American Jews.  Israeli Jews, then and now, are on the front lines.  What do we do to help? Which leads to the third ingredient of Golda's secret sauce: we are not helpless and we are not hopeless.  We have agency and we have power.  That's what those American Jews on January 21, 1948 understood when Golda raised 50 million dollars. David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, called Golda Meir the “Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible.” Golda's generation in America helped create the state.  Our generation in America now can help sustain the state. 

I have two classmates from the Harvard Law School class of 1986 who are extraordinarily famous. World famous, but for different reasons. One of them, Elana Kagan, is a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. She just made news recently because she has argued that the nine justices of the Supreme Court should be held accountable for their ethical practices, and that power without accountability is not a healthy combination in a democracy. The other of them, Kenneth Chesebro, made news recently for being indicted as one of the 19 defendants in the Georgia RICO case for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Chesebro is presumed innocent. The prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But if convicted, he faces jail time. I have been thinking so much recently about their different trajectories: Supreme Court Justice. RICO defendant. And I have been wondering how did their paths diverge so dramatically?

A writer named Robert Hubbell is not Jewish. He and his wife are both observant Catholics. But earlier this year he wrote an essay entitled “My Kippah” about the fact that one of his most cherished possessions is a kippah. He did not know any Jews growing up. One of the first Jewish people he ever got to know was a law school classmate, a woman who became a fast platonic friend and study partner. After they graduated from law school, their friendship continued, and Robert Hubbell and his wife were invited by this friend to join what she called their synagogue havurah, a group of friends that met regularly for conversation, learning and friendship. This observant Catholic couple finds themselves going to Shabbat dinners, Passover seders, Neila services at the Temple and the break-fast after Yom Kippur was over. At all these moments, Robert Hubbell would borrow a kippah and return it when the event was over. When his friend had her first son, Robert Hubbell and his wife attended the brit milah. Before the ceremony began, his friend presented him with a beautiful hand-knit kippah and said: “Here. It's about time you had your own.” Since then, Robert Hubbell would wear the kippah to all the events as the young families in this havurah lived their lives. He wore his kippah to their Bar and Bat Mitzvah services, weddings, and joyful religious gatherings. As the years went by, however, he started wearing his kippah to the funerals of the families in his havurah. One day, alas, he had to wear his kippah to bury his friend. He writes: On Tuesday, I helped to bury my dear friend. She was 65…As I approached the grave, I wondered, “What profound thought is one supposed to hold in mind while helping to bury a lifelong, dear friend?” My mind was blank. No profound thoughts. All that came to mind was, “I am wearing the kippah I wore to her firstborn's bris.” That kippah symbolizes the wellspring of our relationship, our mutual respect for one another's faith traditions. The taut stitches of the kippah mirror the strong bonds of family and friends she wove into the beautiful tapestry of her life. She is gone, but I will hold tight to the kippah as a physical manifestation of her life, just as I will hold fast to the community of family and friends that is her enduring legacy and testament to the world. There is so much pathos, poignancy, beauty, sadness to this story.

Every August there is a show called Hard Knocks about the training camp of an NFL football team.  This year the show focused on the New York Jets because of their new quarterback Aaron Rodgers.  If you are not a football fan, Aaron Rodgers was a legendary  quarterback of the Green Bay Packers where he won both a Super Bowl and the Most Valuable Player of the league four times—two times in the last three years.  Rodgers was thought to be the missing piece that would help the New York Jets compete for a Super Bowl this year.  The Jets had a lot of stars on their team, but they were missing a great quarterback. Aaron Rodgers was that great quarterback, their missing piece.  His presence created tremendous excitement and expectations. Hard Knocks devoted five full episodes to the building, mounting, surging, soaring excitement that the Jets, so mediocre for so long, were now about to have their moment.             I watched all five episodes.  I did it for our congregation since I was searching for High Holiday content.  The basic plot line of all five episodes is: yay!! Aaron Rodgers is coming to New York.  The excitement mounts.                 Then came the first game. It did not follow the plan.

            There is an old joke about a mother who wakes up her son and says: Honey, you have to get up.  It's time to go to shul.  The son resists.  I don't want to go to shul. I want to sleep.  Honey, you have to go to shul. I don't want to go to shul. I want to sleep.  You can't sleep.  You have to go to shul.   Give me one good reason.  Give you one good reason?  What about: you're the rabbi!             What do we do about the things we don't want to do?  It's easy to respond to the things we want to do. Want to go to the Taylor Swift concert? Yes. Want to go watch the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics or Bruins? Yes. Want to go away to the Berkshires or Cape or Martha's Vineyard with your loved ones? Yes. But what about the stuff we don't want to do?  Two things are both true, and they cut in opposite directions.             One, people like doing what they want to do when they want to do it, not what they feel they have to do.  Like the rabbi in the joke who does not want to have to go to shul, we resist what we have to do and gravitate towards what we want to do.             But two:  if all we do is what we want to do when we want to do it, that is an inconsequential life.   If you think about the people you really admire, if you think about the funerals you have been to that leave you inspired, it is never because somebody focused on their own needs. Rather we admire people who sacrifice their energy, time and peace of mind to pursue some greater good.             Thus our dilemma.  We like doing what we want to do. But a worthy life means doing what we don't always want to do.  How do we thread this needle?

            On March 18, 1980, a young historian named Marty Sherwin, then age 43, signed a contract with Knopf publishing to write a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb.  When Marty Sherwin signed the deal, both he and the publishing house expected that it would be a five-year project.  He was to get paid $70,000, $35,000 up front, and the remainder five years later when the book was to have been completed.              But, famously, five years later, he had not completed the book. In fact, five years later, he had not even started writing it. Marty Sherwin was a meticulous researcher, and he found himself in a rabbit hole.  He would spend twenty years doing research on Oppenheimer.  His research came to 50,000 pages of original sources, including 8,000 pages of FBI records.  There were more than 100 records of interviews.              So for twenty years, Marty Sherwin accumulated box after box of material.  Boxes in his attic. Boxes in his basement.  Boxes in his office.               There was just one thing he did not do.  He did not start writing.  The book that was to have been completed in five years was still not started twenty years later.  At first it became a running joke in his family.  Marty Sherwin's son Alex recalled that when he was growing up,  his father would say to him: “Alex, do your homework.”  To which Alex would say: “Dad, write your book.”             But as the years went on, it got less funny.  Sherwin told his wife I am going to die without ever writing this book.  Put the epitaph on my tombstone:  researched but did not write the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.             In a word, Marty Sherwin was stuck. S-T-U-C-K. Stuck.             Most of us are not stuck in the way Marty Sherwin was stuck.   But who among us has not been stuck in our own way?             We are stuck in a job we don't love, but we can't figure out how to get out of it and what to do next.             We are stuck with our children.  Little kids, little problems. Bigger kids, bigger problems, and often it is hard to talk about what really matters, so we let stuff go.             We are stuck in our marriage, okay, not great.             We are stuck financially, still worrying about inflow and outflow.             We are stuck emotionally, walking around with entirely too much worry and too many dark clouds.             We are stuck spiritually, another Rosh Hashanah, and the nagging question, have we grown Jewishly?             Our neshamah, our soul, our morale, our inner life, are all too often stuck in neutral.             If a goal of our life is to thrive, to live our best life now, in too many areas of our life, we are not doing that. In too many areas, we are stuck.             How do we get unstuck?  We can learn from Marty Sherwin's story how we can get unstuck.              The first move is to get help

In this episode Lance and Jacklyn talk football and share their Sunday rituals.  They interview the incredibly talented, funny, and creative comedian Ester Steinberg Gardenswartz.  This is a very inside baseball interview about the world of stand up comedy.  She gives insights into the profession that no one ever talks about!  You get a little glimpse behind the scenes when Lance and Ester do a "hot jock" interview.  Don't know what that is???  Listen and see!You can find Ester Steinberg on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and anywhere you get your podcasts!https://estersteinberg.comInstagram: @Ester_Kay_Twitter: @EsterkayFacebook: www.facebook.com/ester.steinberghttps://www.youtube.com/c/estersteinberg/featuredhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stand-up-mom/id1533561323

The story is told of a man named Harry whose business had fallen on hard times. He goes to shul and prays: God, I don't often ask you for things, but my business is failing, and I need a miracle now. Please help me win the lottery. The lottery happens, and he doesn't win. He is feeling the financial squeeze. If he doesn't get help soon, he might lose his house. So off he goes to shul and prays: God, my business is going belly up, I don't want to lose my house. Please help me win the lottery. The next week, the lottery happens again, and he doesn't win. Off he goes to shul a third time and prays: God, my business has failed, it looks like we're not going to keep our house, my health is deteriorating, my marriage is on the rocks. Please help me win the lottery. To his utter amazement, something happens right then and there that had never ever happened to Harry before: God answered back. From the heavens God thundered: Harry, I would like to help you win the lottery, I really would, but first you have to buy a ticket! I thought about that old joke one day this summer when I read about a woman named Louise Levy who died this summer in Greenwich, Connecticut at the age of 112. She enjoyed remarkably good health until almost the very end of her life. She got to be 111, with no high cholesterol. No heart disease. No diabetes. No Alzheimer's. Louise Levy enjoyed such extraordinary health and longevity that she was selected to be part of a study on aging. Seven hundred Ashkenazi Jews, all 95 years or older, were studied to learn more about the reasons for their unusual health and longevity. Was her secret how she ate, a particular kind of diet? No. Was her secret regular exercise? No. Was her secret that she had a glass of red wine every night at dinner, or that she never drank? No. Was her secret that she was an active member of a faith community? It would have been fabulous if that had been her secret, but no. What then was the secret to her longevity? The answer is genes, very lucky genes.

"The brand is kind of the representation of all of the good or bad things that the customer or the purchasing public perceives around the brand" - Seth GardenswartzIn this episode of To Be Blunt, host Shayda Torabi and guest Seth Gardenswartz, founder of Black Garden Law, explore the art of creating and safeguarding a compelling brand, understanding business goals, legal insights, and effective marketing practices. Discover valuable strategies to develop your brand in the competitive cannabis market, including quality products, federal trademark protection, local community engagement, and strategic partnerships.[00:11 - 08:30] Exploring the Challenges of Marketing Cannabis Skincare and Topicals[08:30 - 16:08] Exploring the Future of Cannabis Branding[16:08 - 23:18] How Cannabis Businesses Can Benefit from Strategic Marketing and Counseling[23:19 - 30:57] Exploring the Challenges of Establishing Cannabis Brands and Trademark Protection[30:57 - 38:43] Challenges and Strategies for Long-Term Success[38:44 - 46:04] Harnessing Brand Equity and Building Codependent Relationships: The Keys to Success in the Cannabis Industry[46:04 - 53:32] Exploring the Challenges of Building a Successful Cannabis Brand in a Maturing Market[53:33 - 00:47] Scaling Local Brands to National Success[00:48 - 01:07:42] Closing SegmentSeth Gardenswartz is a marketing guy who somehow wound up in law school. His specialties include trademarks, brand development, craft beverages, cannabis, IP licensing, e-commerce, digital media, and general business law. Seth co-founded Blackgarden Law with his partner Candice Owens to create a boutique business law firm representing high-growth ventures. They quickly established a substantial practice in the tech start-up and craft beer industries. When recreational cannabis became legal in their home state, they swiftly moved into the market to focus on corporate structure, finance, and brand protection for this rapidly growing industry. Now with a tight-knit group of business attorneys, they represent cannabis brands nationwide.Connect with Seth!Linkedin and InstagramGo to https://www.blackgardenlaw.com/Resources Mentioned:https://www.allure.com/story/cbd-beauty

Why was this Tisha B'av different from all other Tisha B'avs? On all other Tisha B'avs, we read about how once there was a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel, and that homeland was destroyed not by external enemies, but by internal Jewish hatred, what the Talmud calls sinat chinam, hatred of Jew for Jew. In previous years, we got to read about it. We had a luxury. It was history. What's different this year is that we are not reading about it. We are living it. It is not history. It is our reality.

July 22, 2023

What do we do with something that is beautiful, broken, and ours? I want to tell you a story that captures beautiful, broken and ours. The story flows from this black and white photograph that was shared at Hartman two weeks ago by Rabbi Rani Yeager. Rabbi Yeager is the rabbi of a congregation in Tel Aviv called Beit Tefilah. He is also a senior faculty member of Hartman. The photograph is of his mother as a very young child, her siblings, and her parents, Rani Yeager's grandparents. His mother was named Hertzelina by her Zionist parents. Two things about this photograph are striking. One, the date. This photograph was taken in 1944, in Bulgaria. In 1944 the Nazis were intensifying their efforts to murder Jews. In 1944 the cattle cars to Auschwitz were going full-time. In 1944, other countries like Hungary gave up their Jews to the Nazi death machine. And yet, the second remarkable thing about this photograph is that the members of his family are smiling. Why, in 1944, was this family of Bulgarian Jews smiling? Rani Yeager's answer is that ordinary citizens of Bulgaria refused to be Nazi accomplices. Ordinary citizens of Bulgaria protected their fellow Bulgarian citizens who were Jewish. Leadership started at the top. The head of the Bulgarian church said, publicly and clearly, that if you cooperate with Nazis, and send Jews to their deaths, you will be officially excommunicated by the Bulgarian Church. Bulgarian citizens so resisted Nazi entreaties that Albert Eichmann penned a memo saying that the hunting of Jews was not having traction in Bulgaria because Bulgarian citizens were not cooperating. Rani Yeager's grandparents, mother, uncle and aunt were protected during the Holocaust by the decency and humanity of ordinary Bulgarian citizens, and they came to Israel after the Shoah singing the Bulgarian national anthem in their hearts. Rani Yeager carries around this photograph which captures Israel for him.

June 24, 2023

I want to tell you a story that has a coda and a second coda. The context is college baseball. If college baseball is not your thing, if you have never followed college baseball, not to worry. The story, which I heard on ESPN Daily Podcast, is about life. There is a college in North Carolina called Wake Forest, which has a historically mediocre baseball team called the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. The team last won the College World Series 70 years ago. In 2010 a man named Tom Walter became the coach at Wake Forest. The lifeblood of college athletics is recruiting star high school athletes. In Columbus, Georgia there was a star outfielder named Kevin Jordan. In baseball parlance, Kevin Jordan was a 5-tool player. He could do everything that is required to shine on a baseball diamond: hit to get on base, hit for home runs, run, throw, and play superb defense. As a teenager Kevin Jordan was one of the most highly recruited high school baseball stars. He was drafted by the New York Yankees. He was courted by the most powerful and prestigious college baseball programs, which Wake Forest was not. And he was courted by Tom Walter, the new coach of Wake Forest. As Tom Walter would put it, calling Kevin Jordan was his first call. As college coaches in all sports do, Tom Walter paid a recruiting visit to the Jordan home, meeting this young star outfielder and his parents. Tom Walter promised the parents: if Kevin comes to Wake Forest, I will take care of your child. I will watch over him. Both Kevin Jordan, and his parents, believe Tom Walter. The family made the surprising, unexpected decision to say no to the New York Yankees; to say no to the college powerhouse programs; and to say yes to a mediocre college baseball program that had last won a College World Series in the 1950s. They did so based on their intuition that Tom Walter was a mensch. Roll the film forward. In Kevin Jordan's senior year in high school, he started to lose weight. He could not eat. He could not hold anything down. He became slower, weaker. He went to lots of doctors, and they could not diagnose his problem. Meanwhile, his performance on the baseball diamond dropped precipitously. That fall he went to Wake Forest to begin his freshman year. He no longer looked or acted like the superstar athlete he once was. He was very sick. At last he was diagnosed with having a rare auto immune kidney disease. He was in kidney failure. He took 35 pills a day, and was on dialysis three times a week, just to be able to stay alive. The only way he would survive is if he were to get a kidney transplant. But there was a problem. There is far greater need for kidneys than availability of kidneys. If a person needs a kidney transplant, but does not have a kidney donor, they go on a list, which is very crowded with other people who also need kidneys. Kevin Jordan did not have time. If he did not get a kidney, he was not going to survive. All the members of his family were tested, but there was no match. Tom Walter stepped up and said: I'll get tested. Long story short, Tom Walter was a match, and when he discovered that he was a match, he did not hesitate. He agreed immediately that he would donate one of his kidneys to Kevin Jordan.

What character in the Hebrew Bible says, “kill me now”? What character is so burnt out, so dark inside, so spent, so worn down, that he does not want to live any more and literally says “kill me now”? The answer is Moses in our reading this morning. Usually the Torah says nothing about its characters' interior lives. When God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham says hineni, here I am, ready to do the deed. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? The Torah does not say. In stark contrast, in today's reading, upon hearing the Israelites complain for the umpteenth time, upon hearing their revisionist history that they used to eat fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic for free in the land of Egypt, upon hearing their demand for meat when there was no meat to be had, Moses finally lets God have it: And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You dealt ill with Your servant, and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this people upon me? Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them…I cannot carry all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me, kill me now, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness. Numbers 11:11-15. We need to pay attention to this passage. Moses had an interior life, and his interior life was not being tended to, and as a result, he was in a deeply dark place. What is true for Moses is true for all of us. We all have interior lives. Jewish language for that is neshamah, soul. We all have a soul. And we need to tend to our soul lest we become burnt out, anxious, depressed.

I promise that in the fullness of time I will, one day, give a sermon that is not about the Boston Celtics. But today is not that day. We have to process Game 7. What happened on the court Monday night was not just a sad basketball story, if you happen to be a Celtics fan. It was also a confusing, perplexing human story. How do we understand our team losing the first three games, including two at home, and then winning the next three games, including two on the road? How do we understand the Celtics' stunning, last tenth of a second victory in Miami on Saturday night, and then their utter collapse at the Garden on Monday night? So hot, so cold. So dialed in, so not dialed in. So inspiring, so disappointing. Same team. Same players. Same coach. Same week. I had a friend who was at the game. OK, it's Matt Hills, and he and Lisa were at the Garden instead of the Gann Chapel, which is why the team lost. But I digress. Matt observed that the teams' body language told the story. The Miami Heat players were focused and intense. The Celtics were listless. The intense team of Saturday night became the listless team on Monday night. I always think of this as the sudden stranger syndrome. What happens when somebody you think you know, somebody you know and love, starts acting so strangely that they become a stranger to you. You think who are you? I don't quite recognize you.

Rabbi Samuel Chiel, of blessed memory, used to say: the Jewish people are not superstitious…kenahorah. Recently I was an eyewitness to the birth, the thriving, and the death of a superstition…kenahora. It happened in our evening minyan in the Gann Chapel, and it concerned the seating arrangement of two of our evening minyan regulars, Grant Finkel and Lisa Hills. Every night Grant sits in the section to the left, facing the bimah, in the second row. Every night Lisa Hills sits in the section to the right, facing the bimah, in the first row. That is how it has been forever. But one night, for whatever reason, only God knows, Grant Finkel sat next to Lisa Hills in the first row of her section. He had never sat there before. And do you know what happened as a result? I'll tell you what happened. The Celtics won that night. They were in the midst of a playoff series.  Their play had been inconsistent.  The previous game they had not played so well in the fourth quarter and lost.  But the night that Grant sat next to Lisa, the Celtics won a tough game on the road.  Obviously, they won because Grant sat where he sat.  The next night, as folks walked into Gann at about 7:28, we said to Grant: sit next to Lisa again.  He did. And the Celtics won again. The next night, at 7:28, as folks walked in, Lisa and Grant came in as usual.  But on this particular night Lisa's husband Matt Hills also came in.  We said to him: scram! You can't sit next to your wife.  The Celtics are playing!  Sit a few seats away from your wife so that Grant's magical powers continue to lift up the Celtics.  Matt himself is a big Celtics fan.  As it happens, that very night he was wearing a Celtics t-shirt.  He happily complied. Grant sat next to Lisa. The Celtics won. Then came the Miami series. 

If you are a Boston sports fan, two words inspire pathos: Boston Bruins. This past regular season, the Bruins enjoyed not just a successful season, but a historically successful season. The National Hockey League, NHL, is 106 years old. In the long history of the league, this year's Bruins set the record for most wins in a season. They set the record for most points in a season. Not only did they win lots of games; they usually trounced their opponent. The NHL keeps a record of what is called goal differential: by how many goals did the winning team beat the losing team. Boston's goal differential ranks second in history. During the regular season the Bruins could not have been more dominant. Meanwhile, their opponents in the playoffs, the Florida Panthers, could not have been more mediocre. Literally an average team, actually below average. Out of 32 teams, the Panthers had the 17th best record. They just barely made the playoffs. When the series started, the Bruins took a commanding 3-1 lead in a best of seven series. All they had to do was win one more game, a reasonable expectation for the team with the most points and wins in the history of the league. And yet, remarkably, the Bruins lost three games in a row, including game 7 at the Garden on Sunday night. In the wake of this historic collapse of this historic team, sports commentators broadly pointed out that the Bruins failed to finish. Failed to close. How should we think about finishing, about closing out a project?

April 15, 2023

April 12, 2023

April 8, 2023

Israel. The images of civil unrest playing out in Israel this past Monday are images we never thought we would see. Demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Israelis; counter demonstrations; the airport closed; IDF soldiers and reservists and pilots refusing to serve; general strikes; universities closing; ambassadors resigning; a high government official, Yoav Gallant, fired for speaking his mind and asking for dialogue. All this happening just as Israel is about to celebrate its 75th anniversary. And all this happening just as we are about to sit down to our seders Wednesday and Thursday nights. How, if at all, do we talk about Israel at our seders?

I am not proud of it, but one day while on a recent long flight, to make the time pass, I found myself reading a rom com, total beach reading. There were so many other worthier things I could have read. I could have read an analysis of the impasse on judicial reform in Israel. Or I could have done daf yomi, the study of a daily page of Talmud. Or with Passover coming up, I could have studied the Haggadah to get ready for the seders. But no, I read a rom com, light and breezy. I know it would be wrong to evade taking responsibility for this choice. I did it. I own it. I would never want to blame anyone else. I would never want to blame my wife Shira, for example. Even though Shira read it first and seemed to be thoroughly engaged while reading it. Even though Shira downloaded it on our family Kindle. Even though when I asked Shira for a recommendation, she pointed me to this book. Still reading the rom com is on me. The novel features a woman named Nora who writes love stories produced on The Romance Channel. All of her stories follow a script. In fact, so much so, that she challenges one of the characters to offer her some random facts, from which she will fashion one of her scripted stories. She says to this other character: Give me a gender, a location, and a career. Okay…female, Chicago, real estate developer. Okay, easy. Stephanie, a young urban real estate developer, takes a trip to rural Illinois to look into buying a dairy farm and turning it into a corporate retreat center. The young handsome owner of the farm doesn't want to sell, and they butt heads. But as she spends more time on the farm, she sees how important it is to the community, and they fall in love….One day she gets a call that she needs to shut down the farm immediately or lose her job. She leaves for Chicago. He is heartbroken. Oh, no. Oh, yes. But wait…one day he's plugging along, and who comes back? Stephanie! Yes! She's gone back to Chicago and has realized big city living isn't for her. She's going to stay out in the sticks, and oh, P.S., she has a brilliant idea for how to save the farm. The end. Nora generates story after story that follows the script, each gets produced as a movie on The Romance Channel, and so it goes until her own husband, and the father of their two young children, walks out on her, leaving her a single mother. The writer of scripts is now living a life off script. Thus the title of this rom com is Nora Goes Off Script. Why do I mention this just now? Because the theme of this rom com connects directly with both our Torah reading—and our lives.

Will everything be OK? Will all the things that I am worrying about be OK? Will all the things you are worrying about be OK? Will all the things we are worrying about be OK? I would love to believe the premise of a children's story by Anna Dewdney with an evocative title--Everything Will be OK. The plot is that a little bunny worries about little things, like getting the wrong kind of sandwich for lunch; medium things, like losing a kite; and big things, like missing family. In each case the bunny wonders will everything be OK, and in each case the answer is yes, everything will be OK. This book resonates for me because it gives voice to an inchoate anxiety that many of us feel, and to a question that many of us ask: Will everything be OK? What do we do with this question that never goes away? And what do we do when the real answer to the question, if we are being honest with ourselves, is no. That happens to all of us. Our health, or the health of somebody we love, is not OK. Somebody we love is struggling with mental illness, which can be a formidable, sometimes seemingly intractable foe. Not OK. A spouse loses their partner and now lives a much lonelier life. Not OK. Somebody we love dies young, and our world is shaken. Not OK. Somebody loses their job and has to deal with the uncertainty of now what do I do, and the resultant financial anxiety. Not OK. Relational stress and conflict. Not OK. It's great when the problem gets solved, and everything is OK, but what happens when that does not happen? That is the situation for the Israelites in the middle of the Book of Exodus.

The great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez once observed: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” I learned of this quote in the forward to a fascinating book about secrets. Written by noted American Jewish author Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the book is entitled Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy. Pogrebin talks about how deeply held, and deeply embarrassing, secrets were part of her family's culture.

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 since middle school. He watches Trevor's games as a loving brother, but if his brother is not in the game, Chase has no interest in watching sports. Chase is a professional artist. He and his wife Brooke are oil painters and sculptors. They get a lot of commissions, and make a good living, doing art. Here are two siblings—same mother, same father, same home. And yet they are so different. The athlete who has no artistic ability. The artist who has no athletic ability. How do we understand sibling diversity?

This episode is part two of our look back at the start of the podcast through an anthology of leadership lessons from guests: Erin Barra, Dr. Steve Yacovelli, Rand Fishkin, and Marcel Quiroga.We look at leadership from a broader point of view, tackling topic such as how do you build a music education program that gives access to underrepresented groups, the benefits of adding diversity to an organization, what founders should take into consideration when they build company values and the impact of being a woman of latina descent on the decision to start a wealth management company.KEY TAKEAWAYS[00:08] - Introduction[01:21] - Songwriter, educator, and creative entrepreneur Erin Barra, Director of popular music at Arizona State University, shares how she transitioned from artist to full-time educator.[02:57] - Erin shares her profoundly ingrained sense of community service.[04:41] - Erin shares why leaders who meet people where they are and create a safe space for people to be who they are, are more powerful.[05:58] - Why excellence and empathy don't have to be mutually exclusive.[07:24] - Erin shares why joy should be central to any creative journey. [08:18] - The delicate balance of constructive feedback and accountability that catapults growth.[10:06] - Erin shares the probing questions she asks to garner constructive feedback.[11:58] - Dr. Steve Yacovelli, Founder and Principal of TopDog Learning Group, discusses why self-awareness is the key to improving equity. [13:50] - Steve shares the three-point continuum he uses to introduce the diversity, inclusion, and belonging conversation with his clients to help people get on board.[16:13] - Steve shares why a more diverse business culture is essential to profitability. [18:11] - The FOUR LAYERS OF DIVERSITY created by Gardenswartz and Rowe.[19:31] - Steve shares his decision to lead from who he is - the Gay Leadership Dude™. [21:33] - Why Steve filters all of his branding through the lens of who he is. [24:48] - Rand Fishkin, Founder and CEO of SparkToro shares the pivotal moments in his leadership journey. [26:12] -Rand shares the catalyst that led him to write, Lost and Founder. [27:27] -" It's really terrible to have a set of stated values, of expressed values that you sort of put on the wall and the website that are not lived up to...

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?

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.

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?

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.

In October 1973, singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen was hating his life. He struggled with depression. He struggled with drugs like acid and LSD. He had had a child with a woman to whom he was not married, and he struggled with monogamy. His creativity was stymied. He couldn't write. He couldn't find joy in performing. At 39 he felt he was past his prime, that he should retire. In his own words, that he should “shut up.” As Leonard Cohen was in the throes of his mid-life crisis, Israel was attacked on Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973. Israel was unprepared for this war. The initial weeks were brutal. Israel's air force, so dominant six years earlier, was dramatically undermined by new Russian anti-aircraft missiles. Israeli ground troops suffered horrendous casualties. These two stories—Leonard Cohen's personal crisis, and Israel's national crisis—came together because somehow, in the midst of the war, Leonard Cohen decided to go to Israel. The day he arrived, he went to a Tel Aviv café to ponder his next steps. Just then, a group of Israeli singers walked by. One of the singers, named Ilana Rovina, recognized him. Are you Leonard Cohen? I am. What are you doing in Israel? I don't know, I'm not sure, but I think I will go to a kibbutz. Why don't you join us? We are going to the Sinai to sing to the fighters. We'd love you to join us. I don't have a guitar.

This summer Shira and I tried a new move. We started riding e-bikes. An e-bike is like a regular bike, with a seat, handlebars, two wheels, shifting gears. You pedal, and the bike moves. There is only one difference. The e in e-bike is for electricity. There are three settings, and you can give your bike a jolt of a little electricity, a moderate amount, or a whole lot of electricity when the going gets tough. All summer, I felt vaguely like this was not kosher. This was not authentic. A real cyclist would eschew an e-bike. I particularly felt this pang of inauthenticity while going uphill because the steeper the hill, the more electricity I summoned, with the result that it kind of felt like I was Lance Armstrong, climbing the steepest hills with ease, while all the while I knew it was the electricity, it was not me. It felt off, but I couldn't place why it felt off—until this week. This week I was listening to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. Andy Stanley, as I have shared before, is in my view the greatest religious thinker and speaker in America today, and he speaks not only about sacred texts, but also about leadership. In the most recent episode he was interviewing a leadership guru named John Maxwell. John Maxwell has sold 30 million books on leadership. Maxwell is 75 years old. He has been teaching leadership for decades. He said something simple that really stuck with me. He often asks people: what is the greatest life lesson you have ever learned?

What is true for our Torah portion this morning is also true for every human being who has ever lived, including all of us here today. Also true for our country. What we all have in common is complexity: our Torah, our nation, each of us, contains multitudes. Charlie spoke with a wisdom beyond his years about the complexity in our parsha. The same parsha which begins with “Justice, justice shall you pursue” also commands genocide in God's name. Also commands, in God's name, “You may take as your booty the women, the children, the livestock, and everything in the town—all its spoil—and enjoy the use of the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord your God gives you.” We wrestle with Charlie's question, how can the same portion that is emphatically concerned about justice in Deuteronomy 16 also command what we now know to be war crimes in Deuteronomy 20? The Torah contains multitudes. But isn't that true for us all? We can be generous and ungenerous, forgiving and unforgiving, gentle and cruel. We can be present and not present, responsive and not responsive, caring and not caring, depending on the day, depending on the context. All of us contain multitudes. Isn't that also true of our beloved country?

Rabbi David Wolpe tells the story of the time that Ralph Waldo Emerson went to church one Sunday morning and was displeased with the minister's sermon. The minister revealed nothing of his own life story, Emerson complained. He just talked about ideas and texts. Tell me how your life experience connects with my life experience connects with our life experience. In that spirit, I want to talk about the fact that two weeks ago, on July 3, Shira and I were in Italy for the wedding of our son Nat to his husband Davide. I share this with you not just to talk about the wedding, which was joyful and beautiful, but for a way in which a struggle I had on that day might connect with your own version of a similar struggle. What do I mean?

Do you know what the word dox means—d-o-x? I had never heard of the word before this week. I learned its meaning as our community has encountered something you might have heard of, a website called The Mapping Project of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanction) Boston. The dictionary definition of dox is to publish private or identifying information about a person or organization on the internet with malicious intent. BDS Boston engages in a massive doxing of both Jewish institutions and individuals, including many who are members of our own community. It lists names and addresses of institutions and individuals, while the people responsible for this website refuse to identify themselves. BDS Boston is ostensibly about Israel and Palestinians. But in fact it does not discuss Israel. Does not discuss Palestinians. BDS Boston is about us, the Jews of Boston. They are not after Israel. They are after us. Cloaking themselves in anonymity, they pursue a double agenda.

This past week in the holy city of Boston, a miracle happened not once but twice. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Paul McCartney, who is eleven days shy of 80 years old, rocked on at Fenway Park. Fenway was jammed to the rafters, and this 80-year old singer wowed and captivated a full park for two and a half hours. Thirty songs. Did I mention that he is 80? How does an 80-year-old still have the energy, the charisma, the voice to hold that big of an audience for that long? How does a performer continue to perform the same songs that he has been singing, some of them Beatles classics like Can't Buy Me Love, Hey Jude and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da for 60 years, with fresh energy? Can you do that? Can you do the same thing for 60 years, with fresh energy? Could I give the same sermon for 60 years, with fresh energy? Could you hear my same sermon for 60 years, with fresh energy? How does he do that?

How do we think about the person whose views are not only different from our own, but antithetical to our own? What they stand for, we stand for the exact opposite. And yet we share a planet, we share a country, we share a community, perhaps we even share a family. They are not changing. We are not changing. They are here. We are here. How do we see this other human being on the other end of a contentious issue in a contentious time?

If you ever asked Barry Shrage, the long-time former head of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, how he was doing, he always answered in an utterly unique way. In all my life, I have never heard anyone else answer this way. He would always answer: Never better. Never better. What a great response. It is unique. It rhymes. Never better. It is short and to the point. It radiates positive and hopeful energy. There is only one problem. Does it ring true? I have been thinking about Barry's signature phrase this week given the events of the world. With Buffalo, and Santa Ana, and all the other dreadful news that you do not need me to remind you of, is it possible to say and mean : never better? We could engage the world as it is, but that might make us depressed. We could ignore the world as it is and focus on the Eastern Conference Finals between the Celtics and the Heat. But can we engage the world as it is, and still radiate positivity?

Last Shabbat an event of great importance happened: the Kentucky Derby and the unexpected, unlikely, implausible victory of a horse named Rich Strike. It is a double miracle underdog story. As of the day before the big race, Rich Strike was not even supposed to be racing. At the last minute, because another horse that had been scheduled to race was a last-minute scratch, Rich Strike was the last horse to enter the field. And Rich Strike was an 80 to 1 underdog. That made his upset victory the greatest upset victory since 1913.

For the last 45 years or so, our shul has been distributing candles that we light at night to usher in Yom HaShoah. Each candle carries the name of one person, one out of the Six Million. As I shared at this year's Yom HaShoah program, our members Barbara and Steve Grossman showed me their folder that has the names of the individuals that they thought about as they lit the candles every Yom HaShoah for the last 45 years. They have kept every name. I won't go through all 45 years, but just to give you a sense of it: In 1994 they remembered Esther Kligerman. In 1995 Raizel Farbman. In 1996 Moshe Bikel. In 1997 Else Paradies. In 1998 Samuel Hirsch Kornblatt. In 1999 Theres Neuberg. In 2000 Moshe Fish. In 2001 Gertude Meidedner. And so it goes for 45 years. For each one, they would ask, we would all ask: where was the rest of the world? What was the rest of the world doing? That was always our question, at every other Yom HaShoah.

There is a famous vignette in the Talmud that resonates mightily for our time. It concerns a traffic jam. One morning a bride and her retinue go off to her wedding. A happy procession. There is singing and joy in the air. It is palpable. The bride is so happy. She can just imagine the rest of her life, building a life with the love of her life, the good times they will have, the family they will build, the home they will create, the good that they can do together. But at the exact same time, a funeral procession takes off. A wife is now to lay her husband of many years to his resting place. There is sadness in the air. Worry. What will be? The widow weeps: I cannot imagine life without my husband. We have been together forever. I have never been alone. How am I to live alone? The bride's laughter, the widow's weeping, collide. The two processions cannot make it through at the same time. What should happen next?

Now that we have finished both seders this year, I have a question: What is the relationship, if any, between the words we say at the seder, the deeds we do at the seder, or that we commit to do, and the world we live in? Does our living a Jewish life, the prayer, the rituals, the community building, in what way, if at all, does that Jewish living affect the world? Will the two seders we just had affect the world, or will they only affect how we feel going through the world?