There will always be something else demanding your attention. Something unfinished. Something broken. Something frightening. Something you need to figure out. There will be another headline to read, another message… read more

When we fall. Not if. There is something startling about that distinction. We are accustomed to being told to keep going. We are considerably less accustomed to being told that… read more

There is a particular kind of pain that comes from being betrayed by someone you trusted. And then there is the pain of being betrayed by someone you trusted again…. read more

There is a tendency among human beings to underestimate the significance of ordinary moments. We imagine history is shaped by grand speeches, dramatic events, famous leaders, revolutions, elections, interventions, and… read more

There is a strange misconception that many people carry around. They imagine that an ethical person is somehow… different. Always calm. Always smiling. Always patient. Always polite. Always agreeable. Never… read more

One of the hardest lessons I have ever encountered is that love has limits. Not because love itself is limited. But because we are. Human beings often imagine that if… read more

Every Saturday night I sit down to finish writing a sermon. Usually, something that’s been stirring in me throughout the week. An observation. A question. An insight. A realization that… read more

One of the stranger things about human beings is our tendency to hold on to blame. We throw away old receipts. We discard broken furniture. We clean out closets. We… read more

There comes a point, usually after enough disappointment, when the stories we have been telling ourselves about other people no longer hold. The person we counted on betrays us. The… read more

I want to share something beautiful with my non-Jewish friends this week, and that is the holiday of Shavuot, which we just celebrated a couple of days ago. Well what… read more

There are a lot of things I hear non-Jews say about the Hebrew Scriptures, but one thing I rarely hear anyone really grasp is how intensely practical they are. The… read more

In Judaism, the “evil inclination” is called the yetzer hara (יצר הרע), but that phrase is often badly misunderstood. It does not mean a demonic force inside you. It does… read more

There is a quiet test happening in every conversation you have. Its not when you speak, not when you explain yourself to someone else. It’s when you are spoken to,… read more

Trying something a little different this week. Click “play” above. Enjoy! [Verse] Out of the depths of history, a tale unfolds, of a people resilient as time is old. The… read more

I want to take a little detour from our regularly scheduled conversation and interrupt the flow with a more spontaneous message this week. In past sermons, we have dismantled illusions…. read more

I’m not trying to annoy anyone. It would be much easier to repeat the same tired clichés—safer, smoother, more comfortable. But honesty doesn’t live there. Easy words don’t move anything…. read more

This week, I want to take us somewhere we don’t usually go when we speak about G-d. We are used to looking upward. We speak about the heavens, about what… read more

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, a lot of the time I don’t have any of them. I don’t know what the world wants from me. Even if… read more

The Name as a Tree Last time we saw that the Name was withheld. Not erased. Not lost. Withheld. But restraint is only the surface. The tradition did not preserve… read more

Before We Speak of Names Where does our understanding of a thing come from? For most people who believe in G-d, it doesn’t come from study. It comes the way… read more