Reading Books as the Spiritual Practice that Will Heal Us

Yom Kippur Sermon 2026

"The Machzor as a Guide to Responding to Antisemitism" - The Jewish Holidays focus on Unetaneh Tokef --the reality of pain and adversity-- and Scapegoating/Confession. I use these as a guide to understanding and responding to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and I don't hold back from analyzing their relationship.

What are the most common commandments in the Torah? Shabbat? Kashrut? No, it's repetition after repetition about caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the daily laborer. Are these terms that identify specific roles in Biblical society that are not easily mappable onto modern society? Or is that exactly wrong -- even to the point of our mistranslating them (like "orphan") to put ourselves at a distance? 

Almost every part of the last two sections of Numbers seems obvious, and usually offensive, from war, to borders, to women, and so on. I pick three items that seem to need no further interpretation than what we think they mean, and turn them on their heads. WE ONLY SEE TORAH WHEN WE SEE OURSELVES DEEPLY. The last of the three: do we Jews living outside the Land have a right to have opinions about Israel?

I have watched ridiculous ways of explaining why things are right and wrong to small kids --which indicates that most adults have no clue themselves. I've watch the "rational consequences" approach, giving kids long multiple-choice decisions while teasing out each's consequences --while kids stare blankly. I have watched the Golden Role approach -- really?  How about the new trend of Empathy and Restorative Justice? It sounds wonderful, except that it backfires: most kids aren't naturally empathetic, and restorative justice usually just revictimizes the victim. How about we go to the core meaning of "holy" in the Holiness Code of Leviticus: "That doesn't exist for your benefit." (That toy wasn't yours to consider playing with! That yard wasn't yours to go in! That turn wasn't yours to take! etc.)

This year's traditional teaching on a Law of Passover (per the tradition of Shabbat Hagadol). For a download of the text I'm referring to: https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/jewish-law/holidays/pesah/b-dikat-hameitz.pdf

The Iran War began at Purim (about Persia, now Iran) and now we're at Passover with Persia yet again as we are required to read Malachi. The Bible actually ends in the Persian period with the triumvirate of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi. I share some history, some Bible, and some modern absurd framing that exemplifies the idiotic antisemitism rampant in our popular media as this war rages on. 

There is a loss that takes place between the end of Exodus, with the people donating materials and building the tabernacle in small groups excitedly, and the beginning of Leviticus with the routinization of altar offerings and a professional class to facilitate essential social functions. This loss is precisely the one the great thinkers Max Weber and Jurgen Habermas described in their most important works. It's not accident Habermas died with the scroll rolled to the space in between the two Torah books.

This is a Drash on Parashat Tetzaveh, an Exodus portion about the priestly clothing that usually elicits shallow reflections on clothes. Instead, I try to bring to life the amazing living language of garments in Jewish history -- a language of norms embedded in visual cues. It's a language modern culture has thrown away, and the values that go with it, and we are the poorer for it.

For parashat Terumah, the Rabbis pair a Torah reading about Terumah, donation from the heart, with the account of Solomon's building of the first Temple, which was done using "mas," forced labor, the customary tax of the time. But wasn't that what was forced on the Israelites in Egypt, and to which much of the Torah is a direct response? Shouldn't we be just a little bit uncomfortable?