Each year, in the hours that lead up to Rosh Hashanah, I spend time with our High Holiday prayer book (machzor). I have found that these hours in study of our liturgy allow me to be in relationship with not only the prayers, but the sanctity of the holiday. I enjoy this time.  It is sort of a ‘treat’, knowing that by being intentionally ‘open’ to the text, parts of our tradition will rise to the surface, where I can engage in a quiet, reflective manner. This is a different experience than encountering the prayers during worship services.  That tenor is one that is more charged and a quicker pace.  They are both positive experiences, but the quiet time with our machzor is more intimate, more personal.  It is a whisper instead of a shout. Part of what I really enjoy are the meditative readings and side-page intentions, many of which we do not include in our Temple Emanu-El services due to limits in time.  For this reason, they often feel like hidden ‘gems’, … [Read more...]

Most of us are connected to a piece of music, or a melody, secular or religious that moves us to a different time and place. The melodies we hear on the High Holy Days are thick with meaning and tradition. Many of us have sung and prayed to these tunes for most of our lives. This year’s high holy days, without some of our most favorite tunes and missing the majestic depth of our choir, will certainly prove very different. I promise they will still be as meaningful and beautiful as ever! COVID-19 may have impeded in person choral singing, but we are not deterred. Coming to you in several Facebook Live presentations, on Instagram and on our website, are five incredible collaborations. Mah Tovu, Elohai N’tzor, and Sim Shalom are three of our most beloved choral settings at Temple Emanu-El. The textured harmonies add a sense of uplift, inspiration and an aura of drama and profound meaning to our high holy day prayers. Led by our fearless conductor Melissa Fontaine, guided by the … [Read more...]

Yesterday, your Temple Emanu-El rabbis had the honor of sitting as a beit din (tribunal) with an individual seeking conversion to Judaism after more than a year of study, prayer, and Jewish communal participation. Judaism has the highest respect for converts (gerim), and I’m often incredibly inspired by their journey. In the course of our conversation, the young man before us shared that he has taken to wearing a kippah…sometimes. “When?” We inquired. “When I feel like I am entering holy time,” he replied. As much as I like the fact that he is experimenting with outward expressions of Judaism, I love that he is conscious of garments that can delineate regular time from that which is meant to be elevated…kaddosh…sacred. Your clergy and lay-leadership are hard at work putting final touches on a very intentional set of High Holiday services. Our hope is that, for you, the optics are smooth and meaningful; but rest assured, we are agonizing over how to deliver selected liturgy and … [Read more...]

Again and again, in meeting with geyrim (candidates for conversion), b’nei mitzvah students, and many, many adult learners, the topic of God is a fraught one. “The God Talk,” as I have come to think of it, usually begins with reading a section of the Torah much like the one in this week’s parasha, Ki Tavo. Ki Tavo lists functions of God that seem unbelievable to most modern Jewish readers. Divine curses are tied with the exact observance of the commandments that affect crop yields, birth rates, climate change, and even plague. We read these verses with cognitive dissonance and say to ourselves, “well, that’s not the God I believe in.” Today, we find ourselves in the midst of one of those curses mentioned in our sacred text, a plague ravaging the globe, but no one (at least no one of sound mind) is saying that COVID-19 is the result of our failure to follow the commandments. So, if God isn’t found in the curses, God must be found somewhere else. “The God Talk” is much easier when we … [Read more...]

I find that at this time of year, when Yom Kippur is beginning to be on our radar, many of us have ‘forgiveness’ on our mind. Usually this is not in the ivory tower of theology, although one could argue that the entirety of Torah is God’s attempt to work through a dysfunctional relationship with human beings. In these days approaching the Days of Awe, for many of us, ‘forgiveness’ is very much in the dirty trenches of what we would call ‘family dysfunction.’ Almost every extended family has some of it. It is messy, and hurtful, and often takes on characteristics of being chronic. The reasons for family dysfunction are in some ways simple: human beings are complicated, and family dynamics are complex. But the longer it goes on, the harder it seems for us to find resolution other than acceptance that this is just ‘how it is.’ Sound familiar? As a rabbi who engages in a good deal of pastoral care, it’s clear to me that hurtful family dynamics are present all year round. However, the … [Read more...]