Installation Remarks: Let's Get to Work

As your rabbi, I promise to work with you. I promise to be your partner in changing the world. Whether the world is the internal world of the soul and of personal healing. Or if it is the world of our daily interactions. Or if it is the world of the systems and structures that undergird our society. I promise that I will be here to work. And I pray that you will come to work with me.

Isn’t that what the synagogue is for? Isn’t that why we are here? The rabbinate I hope to build is rooted in the relationships that we will form. And through our relationships with each other and with the immortal words of our tradition and with the incredible power that comes from study, prayer, and community, that we will set about making a world worthy of our highest ideals.

Peace in our Rampart

This year I have had the honor of interning at Woodlands Community Temple. For our Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat services we write "iyyunim," introductions to set an intention for a given prayer. Each week we have a theme that all of the iyyunim tie back to. This past Friday, we spoke about Memorial Day. My Senior Rabbi, Billy Dreskin, really liked the iyyun I gave before the Silent Prayer, so I thought I would publish it here. I hope you have a meaningful Memorial Day and have the time to reflect on lives lost in conflict and hope for a world where we no longer know the violence and pain of war.

Morning Blessing Experiment

For my week of leading services at HUC, I wanted to do a little experiment...Here is the introductory iyyun and the handout from the service.:

There’s this commercial for Febreeze that I haven’t been able to shake. Here’s the scene: a teenage boy in his room, thinks everything is just fine. Mom walks in and the screen shifts to what she smells: a dirty, unlaundered locker room. Febreeze warns us against “nose blindness” those things we think are fine just because we have become accustomed to them. But, when we stop to really take a nice long whiff, we realize that something is very very wrong.