One of the most striking aspects of our services today is the emphasis on the actions of the High Priest in Temple. Our Torah reading recounts how, after the death of Aaron’s two sons, God instructed Moses to tell Aaron how to observe the very first Yom Kippur – and that we should observe it from thence forward as a day of atonement. Then, in the middle of the Musaf Amidah, we recount in greater detail the ceremony as it was observed in the Temple. Why do we need to repeat th

Every year as we enter the month of Elul and begin our approach to Yom Kippur, I wrestle with these questions: Who might I have offended or hurt in this past year – or even further back in time? Am I ready to apologize, and make amends? Will they be ready to accept an apology if I offer it? Is there someone who has hurt or offended me in the past year – or further back in time? Would I forgive them if they apologized? Can I forgive them without receiving an apology? Am I obli

Jews are kind of notorious for not liking to talk about God. I don’t mean rabbis and cantors – we have to be comfortable with God, or at least comfortable talking about God. But the average “Jew in the pew” normally prefers to talk about almost anything else. And of course the Jews not in the pews – in New England we call them “the Jews in woods” – have often either found a connection to the Divine through some non-Jewish spiritual practice (Yoga, Buddhism, almost any kind of

This has been a tough year. Tough for the world at large and for many specific countries; tough for inhabitants of the United States, tough for inhabitants of Israel and across the Middle East. Tough for Jews, tough for immigrants and refugees, tough for both the liberal and the conservative branches of the political spectrum. Extremely tough for the environment. And personally tough, for many members of this congregation. Rebbe Nachman of Breslav famously counselled, “It is

Right now we are counting the Omer. Day by day we move forward from the liberation of Pesach toward the fulfillment of Shavuot. This counting is agricultural – the Jews of old had planted their wheat, and were awaiting (with hope and fear) the “First fruits” – the crop that would either sustain them for the year to come, or not. Here in Wisconsin, farmers are watching a dry winter turn into a flooded spring, and no doubt wondering the same thing! The count is also spiritual –

It is said that the Torah has seventy different faces – Shiv’im panim laTorah. The rabbis intended us to understand by this that there are, in fact, limitless interpretations – and no one is more right than another. The haggadah and the seder (order) of Passover are also subject to numerous interpretations. The seder has endured many permutations, keeping its essential character, because we can look it in so many ways. On the other hand, it strikes me that we can categorize t

I’ve known many people who dislike the holiday of Purim. They object to the glorification of violence at the end of the Megillah, where in Chapter 9, verse 5, we read, “And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.” They are uneasy about the raucous, uninhibited nature of the holiday, which seems to be a pure expression of what Freud called the “id”, expressing our hun

One of the primary values in Judaism is hachnasat orchim – welcoming guests. In our siddur (pg. 107) we find a passage from the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Kiddushim 39b) that lists hachnasat orchim among several things that reward us in our lives and in “the world to come”. Tradition holds that Abraham modeled hachnasat orchim when he welcomed the three strangers who came to tell him that Sarah would have child (Gen. 18) He was sitting at the opening of his tent, they tell u