Break the Bonds of Injustice: A Sermon about Race

This is the sermon that I delivered on Yom Kippur morning 5781/2000. It is about racism, privilege, bias, and justice – and about our responsibility to confront this issue and to ensure a just society. The text is below, or you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS-X1HiwPSs Twenty seven centuries ago, a man stood up inContinueContinue reading “Break the Bonds of Injustice: A Sermon about Race”

Life Up Your Head! A Yom Kippur Sermon about Awe

Note: This is the sermon that I delivered on Kol Nidrei this year (5781/2020). It is about the importance of “lifting up our heads” to experience what is awe inspiring in the world around us. The text is below, or you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygSM0_549SU There is a strange story in the midrash. ItContinueContinue reading “Life Up Your Head! A Yom Kippur Sermon about Awe”

Hineini: Here I Am

This is the sermon that I delivered on Rosh Hashanah morning 5781 (2020) in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is about the ways that we can be there for each other, even when we can’t be together. The text is below, or you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/FYl5WMQmQpg When I was four yearsContinueContinue reading “Hineini: Here I Am”

By the Rivers of Babylon

A Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning 5780   It’s not every day that a song attains popularity in two different years. It’s even more unusual when those two years are more than 25 centuries apart from each other. In 1970, a Jamaican reggae group called the Melodians released a song called “By the Rivers ofContinueContinue reading “By the Rivers of Babylon”