From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was courageous beyond measure. He walked with clarity and conviction in the face of menacing dogs, water cannons, angry mobs, and violent police and never seemed afraid.  What gave him this courage? In this sermon, we will hear his own testimony from his book Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story, as Dr. King shares what enabled him to move from paralyzing fear to courageous action. Can we learn to do that? Can we do our own version of what he did?

What would you think about a nephew marrying his aunt—his mother or father’s sister—and starting a family together? It feels creepy, gross, incestuous. In fact, the Torah not once but twice bans nephew-aunt unions.Do not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is your father’s flesh. Leviticus 18:12You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister or of your father’s sister, for that is laying bare one’s own flesh; they shall bear their guilt. Leviticus 20:19Why am I telling you this? What am I leading with this unsavory subject? Because in this week’s portion, the Torah abruptly slams the breaks on the telling of the Exodus story—Moses’s initial demand to Pharaoh to let my people go, Pharaoh’s rejection and demand that the Israelites make the same tally of bricks but gather their own straw, God’s reaffirmation that God has heard their cry and will redeem them, and then the first seven of the ten plagues—the Torah slams the breaks on all this suspense before the plagues begin, to offer a genealogy. Genealogies are eye-glazing. One tends to pass over it to get back to the drama. That would be a mistake.This genealogy contains a bombshell:Amram took to wife his father’s sister Jochebed, and she bore him Aaron and Moses…It is the same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring forth the Israelites from the land of Egypt, troop by troop.” It was they who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt to free the Israelites from the Egyptians; these are the same Moses and Aaron. Exodus 6:20 and 26-27.Turns out, the dry genealogy is not so dry. It makes two points. One, Aaron and Moses are the fruit of a nephew-aunt union that we know to be creepy and incestuous, and that the Torah itself twice prohibits. Two, it is precisely and defiantly this Aaron and Moses that lead the Israelites out of Egypt.What is Exodus 6 trying to teach us?

TE Teen, Maya Afergan, delivers a special guest sermon as part of our Youth Shabbat Morning service on January 10th.

Why does Boston need a new Holocaust museum now? Jody Kipnis, Co-Founder and President & CEO of the Holocaust Legacy Foundation, shares the ways the museum (opening in late 2026 across from Boston’s historic Freedom Trail) urgently confronts the rise in antisemitism today, and how its exhibits teach about democracy, choice, and moral courage.

December 27, 2025

How did we get from Saturday night to Thursday night?The arc of this past week, the dizzying emotional trajectory, is hard to explain, a genuine mystery. Saturday night, December 13, was Bondi Beach and Brown. The Hanukkah celebration by the Sea that became the Hanukkah massacre by the Sea. The school shooting at Brown, an hour from here, where we have students, parents of students, and long-time faculty at Brown who are members of Temple Emanuel.Just five nights later, Thursday night, December 18, was our Hanukkah celebration. Now we do a Hanukkah celebration every year, but it was never better than this year. It was never more robustly attended, and never more robust in joy, in spirit. Hundreds of us were celebrating Hanukkah, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, singing, clapping, smiling, shmoozing, catching up with each other happily, eating latkas and sufganiyot, our youngest learners making sugar cookies shmeared with way too much blue frosting, but eating it all with a messy smile. The choirs sang, the musicians played, the parents shepped nachus. We also skewed young, very young that night: preschool children, elementary school children, teens and their parents and grandparents. We sometimes hear the question: where are the young people? The answer is: The young people were at our Hanukkah celebration in droves. It was the world as it should be, utter loveliness.And we were not alone.The Jews of Greater Boston celebrated Hanukkah this week with intensity and joy. We knew exactly what happened when there was a public celebration at Bondi Beach. Did that cause us to cower? Did that cause us to cancel our public Hanukkah celebrations? Just the opposite. We had a profusion of joyful, public Hanukkah celebrations in the week of Bondi Beach and Brown, inspired by a resolve not to succumb to terrorism and darkness.We had joyful, public candle lightings in Newton, Chestnut Hill, Brookline, Needham, Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, Everett, Quincy, the Boston Common. The MFA. How do we understand this arc from the darkness of Saturday night to the light of Thursday night? The darkness of Saturday night was real and deserved. The stories that came out—the 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, Alex Kleytman, who survived Hitler, Naziism, and lethal European Jew hatred, only to die on a beach in Australia in 2025, every story its own infinite tragedy—all these stories are completely heart-breaking. If this infinite tragedy had curtailed our Hanukkah joy, that would have been understandable, but the opposite happened—a joy that flowed from a resolute place. Our members who thoroughly enjoyed our Hanukkah celebration were not faking it. We were not acting. We were not Meryl Streep. We were genuinely happy in the same week as this deep tragedy that befell our people. What is that?

We are all horrified by the mass shootings at Bondi Beach and Brown University that coincided with Hanukkah. We mourn the tragic and senseless loss of innocent life. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded. So too we are horrified by the murder of 47-year old MIT professor Nuno Loureiro in his Brookline home. So too we are horrified by the assaults on Jews this week in the subway in New York City. How to understand such hate and darkness on Hanukkah, a time of love and joy, is on everybody’s mind. The sermon tomorrow will be about that topic. In the meantime, we are going to center and anchor ourselves by the classic Jewish response to the vicissitudes of life: learning Torah.Should. A charged word. Even more charged: You should… When, if ever, should we say, “You should”? Many of us are wisely and properly reluctant to say those words. The last Daily of 2024 included an interview with Philip Galanis, the advice columnist for the Times. His advice was not to give advice. His advice was to ask questions, to listen carefully, to get the person with whom you are talking to clarify their own thinking and come up with their own solutions. When asked for a New Year’s resolution, he offered: to listen better. The humility and restraint of listening, asking good questions, and helping people come up with their own solutions was the core of an essay written by Rabbi Chiel in his classic volume Beyond the Sermon: Stories of Pastoral Guidance (2004), in which a woman with a troubled marriage wanted Rabbi Chiel to offer that she should get a divorce, but he would not weigh in on the merits for cogent reasons he explains in his essay entitled “Our Limitations.” And yet, there are two famous examples in the Torah of a biblical hero saying “You should.” One is Joseph in our portion this week. Summoned out of prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, he does so. He interprets the dreams. Egypt will have seven years of abundance followed by seven years of scarcity. And then, Joseph offers unsolicited advice: store the abundant produce of the years of feast so that it will be there to sustain the people during the years of famine. Pharaoh heeds this unsolicited advice, and it saves the lives of hungry Egyptians (and in time the rest of Joseph’s family that comes to Egypt from Canaan in search of food). The other example is Yitro, who sees that Moses is working around the clock settling disputes among Israelites. Moses is exhausted. The people are exhausted waiting in line for their turn. Yitro offers unsolicited advice that Moses tap wise Israelites who can help adjudicate the claims so that Moses will not be ground down, and the people will not have to wait so long. Moses heeds this unsolicited advice to the betterment of himself and the people. Thus the tension between our common practice and our canonical tradition. Our culture trains us to listen, to ask questions, not to pontificate, not to offer our answers. We are supposed to know that our answers may not work for the person we are talking to. Yet the Torah offers two stories of unsolicited advice that was wisely followed for the betterment of all involved. When, if ever, should we say should?

Omri D. Cohen’s new book ‘Questions to Humanity’ contains 106 questions from people all over the world to humanity at large. Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz and Omri discuss what inspired the project, how he gathered the questions, and what we can all learn from the questions of our fellow man.You can learn more about about Questions to Humanity at https://qtohumanity.com/, on Amazon and with the video series on Instagram.

December 13, 2025

Every once in a while, I read a d’var Torah that takes my breath away—an interpretation that is original, creative, casts a new light on an old question, and does it so persuasively that I can no longer see any other way to read the text.Josh Foer is the founder of Sefaria, a free online digital library of Jewish texts. He is also the co-founder of Lehrhaus, a Jewish tavern and house of learning in Cambridge. He is also on the board of The Jim Joseph Foundation where he recently offered a new lens on Esau. According to Josh’s stunning read, Esau was the first Jew who was not into Judaism. He would not be the last. He is the patron saint of many Esaus today.Esau’s father was Isaac, his mother was Rebekah, he had family yichus, but he preferred to marry a “leggy Hittite,” in Josh’s phrase. This reading of Esau offers us a lens for all our children and grandchildren who choose not to value or live out their Judaism. This chronic challenge has never been more acute.There are our children and grandchildren who opt out because they never saw the value in it. Because they were never wired to connect to Jewish life. Because they fell in love with and married a non-Jewish partner, and raising Jewish children is not their priority. Because they are alienated by Israel and the posture of their parents and Jewish institutions to support Israel in these polarized times.What do we do when our rising generation is not into it?Here Josh Foer offers his most sparkling insight. Why did Esau forgive Jacob? Why did Esau kiss Jacob? Josh’s answer: Because Esau was deeply good with his own life. In the intervening twenty years, Esau had moved on. Esau was busy and happy living his own life as a patriarch of his own clan. Esau was not living a Jewish life. But he was living a very happy and fulfilled life.After the reconciliation, the Torah offers us the genealogy of Esau, page after page of Esau’s descendants. Historically Jews never got Genesis 36. What is it in the Torah for? Why does the Torah bother to give us five pages of who begat whom in the unimportant story of Esau. Synagogues seldom to never dwell on the eye-glazing irrelevancy of Esau’s generations. The classic Jewish voice on Esau’s generations is that of Rashi, who dismisses it as so much sand that a person sifts through until they find the pearl, the thing that matters, the person that matters, the story of Joseph and his brothers.Josh Foer’s brilliant read on Esau reminds us that Esau is doing just fine. We who do not see him are the poorer for his not being part of our life. If Josh is right, and if we ought not to lose a single soul, what are we to do about the many, many Esaus in our families today? If we love and accept them for who and what are, is that wisdom? Or is that giving up on the Jewish story? Do we have a choice to make here, and if so, what is that choice?

I once met with a family after their beloved mother and grandmother had passed away. Her son shared that whenever he would visit her, she would say to him before he left, please call me to let me know you got home. One day, as he was taking leave, she said to him again: please call me to let me know you got home. He finally said: “Mom, I live in Newton. You live in Newton. We have both lived in Newton all our lives. I live 10 minutes away. And Mom, I am 62 years old! Do I still have to call?” And then he realized that for his mother, worrying was a form of love. She showed her love through her worry.But worrying is not always a form of love. Sometimes worrying is about facing real fear. That is the story of our father Jacob in our portion this morning.Twenty years after stealing Esau’s blessing, Jacob comes back home to Canaan, to face Esau, worried that his brother might still want to kill him for the sins of his youth. Jacob sends out messengers to find out the lay of the land. Their report is alarming. Esau is coming to meet Jacob, and he is bringing 400 men—arba me’ot ish—with him. 400 men? That sounds like an army! Jacob is terrified. What if these 400 men kill my family and me?Worry is an inevitable part of life. What is our version of an army of 400men? Do we worry about how we are going to handle real loss and real pain? Somebody we love has passed on, how will we live without them? Do we worry about our children not finding their way?Do we worry about a serious health challenge that we or somebody we love is facing?Do we worry about professional setbacks or financial woes?What is a healthy way to handle legitimate worries?

In this vintage Jerry Seinfeld bit, the comedian captures a moral dilemma of our time, in America, in Israel, in the world: our jersey color shapes our moral vision. We identify with our team, whom we root for, and it shapes how we see the world. For our team, yay! For the other team, boo! But what about the moral equities?Can we root for our team and also see the humanity of the other team? Or does rooting for our team necessarily mean we cannot or should not see the humanity of the other team? Is seeing the humanity of the other team a violation of loyalty to our own team? Case in point: Esau.If you just read the Torah text, who is more noble: Esau or Jacob? When Jacob lies to his blind father and steals the blessing, the Torah describes Esau’s reaction:When Esau heard his father’s words [already gave the blessing to Jacob who obtained it by guile], he burst into wild and bitter sobbing, and said to his father, “Bless me too, Father!” But he answered, “Your brother came with guile and took away your blessing.”…And Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” And Esau wept aloud. Genesis 27: 34-38.If you just read the Torah, if you just look at the equities, we would root for Esau, or at least have some sympathy for Esau. But for the rabbis of the midrash, living in the age of Rome, when the Jewish people were in dire straits, the midrashic tradition equates Esau with Rome, with Christianity, with oppression of Jews. Esau is the other team. Jacob is our team. The rabbinic tradition vilifies Esau. Does the rabbinic treatment vilifying Esau, denying him his humanity, teach us what to do, or what not to do? What do we do?

In the festive spirit of Thanksgiving weekend, let me start with two trivial pursuit questions. Who famously said “It ain’t over till it’s over”? And what was the context for this observation?Answer: It was Yogi Berra who said: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” And he said it in 1973 when he was managing the underachieving New York Mets. Their season had been a long slog. They could not win consistently. After one particularly dispiriting defeat, reporters asked Yogi Berra if their playoff hopes were finished. That’s when he answered, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” His words would prove to be prophetic.For the 1973 Mets, it was not over. The Mets rallied late in the season, they ended up making it all the way to the World Series, which they lost in 7 games. The 73 Mets emerged from their long slog to embody their manager’s wisdom: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”Long slogs are not limited to baseball teams.I recently have been thinking about the long slog a writer of fiction named Virginia Evans who wrote eight books that never got published. She poured all her energy into writing eight novels. And eight times the answer of the universe was no. Virginia Evans started to write her ninth novel, but she was so shaken by her history of rejection that she considered abandoning her dreams of becoming a writer—and applying to law school instead.What are our long slogs? What is our ninth try?

The Talmud, Bava Metzia 84A, has an emotional story about a love gone bad. Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish are drawn towards one another. They become mentor-disciple and then colleagues. They bring out the best in one another. Reish Lakish marries Rabbi Yochanan’s sister, and the couple has children. And the text hints, strongly, that in an age before gay was okay, they were attracted to one another. And then, it all falls apart. They say mean things to one another. Why they do so is not clear. The words are freighted and hurtful, though the reader does not quite get what the hurt is all about. They have a falling out. They each die of heartbreak over their broken relationship. Why this story of love gone bad now, on the Shabbat of Thanksgiving? On Thanksgiving family and friends come together from near and far. We see each other again after having not seen each other in our day to day lives. We like to assume that family and friends will always remain family and friends. We like to assume that if we were close and connected, we will always be close and connected. But this Talmudic love story offers us a cautionary tale that it ain’t necessarily so. What do we learn from the deep but broken love of Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish about what not to do, and what to do, to keep the loves of our lives alive?

November 8, 2025

These two things are both true.Literally from the first page of the Jewish story, Zionism is core, central, essential, at the heart of, Judaism. There is no Judaism without Zionism. There is no Judaism without the State of Israel. The Jewish story begins with these lines from our reading this week:The Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you." (Genesis 12:1)That land turned out to be Canaan, so named because a people named Canaanites lived there."The Canaanites were then in the land." (Genesis 12:6)Abraham is called ha’ivri, which means he crossed over to get to Canaan. He is not from Canaan. Ivrit, Hebrew, is the language of those who crossed over.Zionism is foundational to our story and our mission from our very beginning.But this also is true. For Abraham, in his time, for us in our time, for Jews in all times, trying to establish a home in the land of Israel has proven not only practically difficult—creating constant friction with those who were already living there—but also morally challenging. On October 24 Daniel Gordis interviewed Judy Lev about her new book, Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile, which consists of twelve fictional stories that take place in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Bakah. Please read Law of Return, which is the fascinating and troubling story that Danny highlighted in his conversation with the author.How does reading this story make you feel? What does reading this story add to your understanding of the complexity that is Israel? What do you do with the complexity that this story embodies?So that folks will have enough time to read this story, we are sending out the teaser today, rather than Friday.

Joy! How do we get back to joy?       There are plenty of times in our lives when joy is easy. We saw that this morning. When a beautiful daughter and granddaughter like Adeline Lake is born, joy is easy. When that beautiful baby grows into a radiant and wonderful teen like Robin whose Bat Mitzvah we celebrate today, joy is easy. When we dance at the wedding of a loved one who has found love, joy is easy. Joy is easy not only at these lifecycle moments. When we love to ski, and we are on the slopes on a perfect day, fresh powder, blue sky, bright sun, gorgeous conditions, joy is easy. When we love to bike, and we are on the road, and the wind is at our back, joy is easy. But what about times when joy is not easy. For the Jewish people now, joy is not easy. For the State of Israel now, joy is not easy. This Monday will mark two weeks since the hostages came home. Now that the euphoria of their return has passed, what’s next? For the last two years, we have largely lived in the land of oy. We need to pivot from oy to joy. We want to pivot from oy to joy. But how do we pivot from oy to joy when we still feel oy?

Last Shabbat Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, a preeminent Conservative rabbi of a preeminent Conservative synagogue, gave a sermon telling his congregants not to vote for Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York.His opening paragraphs: “To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record, I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community.Mamdani’s refusal to condemn inciteful slogans like “globalize the intifada,” his denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, his call to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister should he enter New York, and his thrice-repeated accusation of genocide in Thursday’s debate—for these and so many other statements, past present, and unrepentant—he is a danger to the Jewish body politic of New York.”I could not agree with Rabbi Cosgrove more on the merits. But his passionate sermon raises the question: Should rabbis talk about politics on the bimah? If you think Rabbi Cosgrove was right to do so, what about talking about national politics? If it is right to talk about Zohran Mamdani on the pulpit, is it also right to talk about the President and his policies on the pulpit?To date, we have studiously avoided talking about American politics in order to preserve Temple Emanuel as a place where all of us, regardless of politics, feel that 385 Ward Street is our spiritual home. We learn with, we sing with, we pray with, we have Kiddush with, people who see the world very differently than we do. That is rare. And precious. Where else do you find it? To preserve it, we avoid the divisive issues of our day. But Rabbi Cosgrove’s courageous sermon, his moral clarity, invites us to reexamine our posture.It is good to preserve peace. But does not confronting hard national issues in the name of preserving peace mean we are failing at another important value: moral clarity in the face of moral issues?   We will examine these hard questions through two lenses in our weekly Torah readings: Noah, who builds the ark to save himself and his family but does not act to save the dying world, and Abraham, whose mission God tells us is to do righteousness and justice and who acts to save Sodom and Gomorrah.Preserving peace vs. moral clarity in the face of moral dilemmas. Our synagogue as a refuge from our troubled world vs. our synagogue as giving us courage to repair our troubled world. Hard questions. No simple answers. Would love your voices.

October 18, 2025

October 14, 2025