Shabbat Sermon: Choosing Teams Over Titles with Ritual Coordinator AJ Helman

Such an important question, “where is God?” It seems so basic, yet do we ever stop to ask ourselves this question? Probably only rarely, if at all. It must be at the same time the most basic of questions yet the one question we never really ask ourselves. We think we know the answer to the question. But do we ever think about it? Is God everywhere? Is God’s presence something that is unrelated to what we do or not do? Can we help bring God’s Presence to dwell among us? If so, what can we do?About Rabbi Israel de la PiedraRabbi Israel has been working with the sick, the old and the dying for the last fifteen years. He was the Rabbi and Spiritual Director at Miami Jewish Health (MJH), a large senior residential and rehabilitation facility in Miami, from 2014 to 2021. He was awarded the “Clergy of the Year” award by the Ministering to the Elderly Conference in Miami in 2021 for his work at MJH. After his return to Boston in late 2021, Rabbi Israel worked as a hospice chaplain at AccentCare Hospice and currently serves as the rabbi at Hebrew Senior Life’s Simon C. Fireman Community in Randolph, MA. Rabbi Israel received his rabbinical ordination from Hebrew College in 2013. Prior to becoming a rabbi, he had a long career as an economist with the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC and in two African countries. Rabbi Israel and his wife Aliza are proud members of Temple Emanuel and keep homes in Kiriat Motzkin (near Haifa) in Israel and in Canton, MA.

August 15, 2026

This week’s Torah portion offers us a list of forbidden and permissible foods, but Jewish tradition challenges us to look beyond what we eat and ask deeper questions about desire and limits, physical and spiritual hunger, gratitude and abundance, joy and responsibility.Join Rabbi Saltzman as we explore three powerful Torah stories: the forbidden fruit in Eden, manna in the wilderness, and the milk and honey of the Promised Land. What can these stories teach us about what it means to eat—and to live—as a Jew in the 21st century?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.

When we are inthe midst of our Bar and Bat Mitzvah season, our clergy team meets with the teen whose big day is coming up that Shabbat. We often ask some version of this question: As you are about to begin your Jewish adulthood, tell us some of your dreams. What do you want to do when you grow older? Who do you want to become?Appropriately enough, most often the answer is: huh? What? What did you say?They look attheir parents, who always say the same thing. "Don't look at us. Look at the rabbis. They're asking you the question."At which point the most common answer is: "I don't know." Or: "I have no idea."I plead guilty. I am usually the one asking that question. And I don't know why I keep asking it, given how fruitless it is and how dry the conversation goes.But once, Hashem rewarded me for asking the question. I said to a Bar Mitzvah student:"What do you want to do when you grow up?" With no hesitation, no looking at his parents, no helpless look, he declared: "I want to run a hedge fund.” Total clarity. I asked the obvious follow-up question: "Why? Why do you want to run a hedge fund?"He was thirteen. Too young for pretense or affect. So he said: "I want to make a lot of money." At which point I asked the obvious follow-up question: "Why? What would you do with all that money?" His answer was clear. "I would want to have a really nice life. A big house. Nice vacations. Nice cars.”I have been thinking about this inspiring conversation this week because I have been reading Jim Collins's new book, What to Make of a Life, and because of a famous teaching in our Torah portion this morning.This teen's unvarnished answer points to what Collins calls “the arrow of money.” We work hard. We make money. We use that money to build the life we want. Our home. Ourvacations. Our children's education. Our tzedakah. Our retirement. That arrow is familiar to all of us. Our work leads to our money leads to our life, the arrow of money. But Collins observes that many people who live deeply meaningful lives embody a different move. In his phrase, they “reverse the arrow of money.” They do not ask: "How can my work make me money?" Instead they ask: "How can I make enough money so that I can do the thing I most want to do?" One of the people he profiles, the historian Barbara Tuchman, did not write books in order to make money. She earned enough money so that she could write books. Collins argues that the deepest question is not how to make money but what do we do once we have enough. Remarkably, that is exactly the point Moses makes in this week’s Torah portion: Lo al halechem levado yichyeh ha'adam. Man does not live by bread alone. We usually hear those words as a statement about spirituality. But in context, Moses is saying something quite specific.

Welcoming is an essential part of the Jewish tradition and a key to spirituality. I’ll discuss my take on how I and so many others at Temple Emanuel work to create a welcoming – a hamish – community for our congregants and all who enter the shul. I’ll look at Genesis 18 – what I’ve always considered the “ushers’ parsha – and Abraham’s response to seeing three angels outside his tent. A central theme will be one espoused by Rabbi Gardenswartz and others – that God lives in the space between us and thereby the importance of connection and creating a caring community. I’ll also point to what I consider the seminal contributions made by Rabbi Ron Wolfson when he consulted here 15 or 20 years ago and literally wrote the book “The Spirituality of Welcoming.” Further, I’ll bring my perspective on ushering at TE for the past quarter century, my 25 or so years on the Board of Directors and other shul roles, and my learning and practicing Mussar for the past seven years. And I’ll make sure to thank my wife, Sandy, whose contributions to the shul dwarf mine in every respect.About Rick ThauAs descibed by Rick himself: Sandy and I joined TE in 1984 when she was pregnant with our first son, David. We started coming to services Friday nights and Saturday mornings about a decade later and haven’t stopped. I said Kaddish for 11 months for two grandparents and my father, have kept coming to morning minyan (the best) virtually every day since my father died in 2017, have been part of the Elyse Friedman-led Bereavement Committee for about 15 years — leading dozens of shiva minyan services since — started the shul softball team about 20 years, cooked a gazillion hot dogs and burgers at the shul BBQ since the days of the old shul, ate more egg salad at Kiddish than any congregant ever, and a few other things, likely of little consequence. Basically, I help out as I can given my limited skills. I began ushering in the 1990s back in the days of the peerless Irwin Sydney and Haskell Shapiro, z’ls both, which adds up to well over 1,018 services on Shabbos, the Holidays, and the Chagim. Every day at TE has been a blessing. The place has provided me and, I firmly believe, anyone who enters the building the opportunity to grow, connect, and become a better person and better Jew. Along the way, I made my living as a writer, editor, and general nuisance in politics, government, and the tech and finance industries, ending with 22 years at Fidelity.

This talk traces Yuval's family’s journey from Basra and Nasiriyah in Iraq to Israel in the 1950s. Through the story of his parents, his childhood in Be’er Sheva’s Dalet neighborhood, a predominantly Mizrahi community, and his father’s work in Gaza during the 1970s and early 1980s, he reflects on the intertwined histories of Jews and Arabs, memory, migration, and belonging. It is both a personal family story and a window into a chapter of Middle Eastern and Israeli history that continues to shape our present.About Yuval EvriYuval Evri is Associate Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. He is a cultural historian specializing in modern Sephardi/Arab-Jewish history. His book, The Return to Al-Andalus: Disputes Over Sephardic Culture and Identity Between Arabic and Hebrew, was published by Magnes Press in 2020. The English edition The Return to Sepharad and the Erasure of al-Andalus, is scheduled for publication by Indiana University Press in Spring 2027.

When the tribes of Gad and Reuben ask to settle east of the Jordan, Moses hears a threat to Israel’s future. Together we’ll discover how the Torah and the Book of Joshua model a framework for the people to remain bound by one covenant while living very different realities. In a time when Israeli and Diaspora Jews face different challenges but share one destiny, we’ll learn what the Torah teaches about belonging, responsibility, and building a Jewish future together.About Rabbi KotlerRabbi 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 six grandchildren.

What does it mean to be blessed without knowing it, especially in a period permeated by suffering and perceived meaninglessness? Today, reading these two parashot together yields some incredible insights into how we can reframe our perspectives, cultivate gratitude, and actively build a better reality for ourselves.About Michael RosembergMichael Rosemberg is a rising senior in the Joint Program between the Columbia University School of General Studies and List College of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Economics-Political Science at Columbia and in Jewish Ethics at JTS. His academic interests include political theory, American politics, Jewish pluralism, Jewish theology, and Jewish relations with non-Jews. At Columbia, Michael is a member of the Honor Society of the School of General Studies and the Mu Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society. At JTS, he is a List College Fellow and will be completing an undergraduate thesis that explores the Latin American Jewish community’s response to the surge in antisemitism following October 7th. He has completed a selective fellowship for promising Jewish leaders in Columbia/Barnard Hillel’s Alexander Jewish Leadership Institute. He has also taken part in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Jewish Teen Fellowship. Beyond his academic pursuits, Michael is deeply involved in Jewish communal life and leadership. He serves as the co-president of the Challah For Hunger student group at Columbia/Barnard Hillel, and he frequently leads services for various minyanim, most notably leading this past year’s High Holy Day Services at Temple Emanuel. Michael feels humbled and is very grateful for the opportunity to share Torah with all of you.

I need all of you to join me on a sports-nerd journey, for a second, because the Knicks just won their first championship since 1973. I’m aware this may not be the right crowd for this, but my parents are from New York, and as the famous song says, “I was born a Knicks fan, it’s genetic.” To say this championship meant a lot to New York and the Knicks would be an understatement, but what really made this championship so special was not just that the Knicks won, but how they won.

We all love closure. We would all love to know that a danger we had worried about has passed, that we can exhale. All good. All safe. Peace. Nothing to worry about anymore. Open a bottle of wine. Rejoice.Sometimes that happens. And other times, perhaps most times, it does not.How do we do life when the closure we wish for is not to be had? That is a question for us in our personal lives. That is certainly a question for Israel and the Jewish people now.No Israeli commentator or thought leader that I have heard or read believes that the existential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear regime has passed. The war was begun because Iran’s nuclear ambitions and repeatedly stated desire to destroy Israel were an existential threat. The ceasefire that was announced this week does not resolve that existential threat. How do Israelis, and the Jewish people, and all who would oppose nuclear annihilation of a people, do life without closure—with the threat still unresolved?For our last Talmud class of the year, we are going to examine the tractate Ta’anit, which deals with an existential threat to ancient Israel: drought. No rain meant no water to drink, no water to support vegetation, no produce, no food. Drought meant famine. Drought meant hunger.How to handle this ancient existential threat to life? Ta’anit, which means fast (as in Yom Kippur) offers us two models for living when we cannot exhale, for life without closure. The threats (drought/famine and Iranian nuclear ambition) are different. But our limited options for living with them are the same.