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Not My Job? Yom Kippur Mincha Devar Torah 2009

The words and concepts that we will read this afternoon are engrained in each Jew so deeply that they are the essence of Jewish DNA as it were. Known as the “Holiness Code,” the text is a to-do list of making ourselves holy, meaning to be special, unique, separate. Taken at face value, it would seem obvious that these are things we should do: revere your mother and father, keep Shabbat, stay away from idols, don’t steal, don’t lie, and don’t be deceitful … to be vulgar, this is a “no-brainer.” But clearly there is more to be gleaned, more to be learned; and we find our lesson in the first two verses of our parashah. Moses is speaking to the “whole Israelite community. We are all here – figuratively if not literally (as I look out into the congregation this afternoon) – and we are all included. These words, these chores, these admonishments are not meant for some of us. We are ALL involved: whether we consider our Jewish practice to be observant, secular, ethnic, cultural; whether we pr
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Finding God - Yom Kippur Morning - Devar Torah

O Lord, where shall I find you? Hid is Your lofty place; And where shall I not find You, Whose glory fills all space? These words from Yehuda ha-Levi, the late 11th/early 12th Century Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher, inserted into the morning worship of the Reform Movement’s Gates of Repentance Machzor, sum up the essence of this morning’s Scriptural readings. We began last night’s service by reciting a formulaic prayer declaring it “permissible to pray with those who have transgressed.” Since this is a communal declaration, we must assume that we are referring to all of us – we have all transgressed. An appreciation for this communal state of spiritual defilement is essential to this morning’s Torah and Haftarah readings. We begin with the relatively dry job description of the priest’s responsibilities found in parashat Acharei Mot. At the end of the lit of his chores, we have a personnel change: From the priest’s job description, we switch to our own. We start with Aar

Seeing Things - Rosh Hashanah Day 2 Devar Torah

God said to Abraham: take your son by the hand. God said to Abraham: you gotta take him by the hand (take him by the hand). Take your son, your only son – Isaac, yeah, that’s the one. Moriah is where you’ll be when you offer up your boy to me. God said to Abraham: take your son by the hand. God said to Abraham: you gotta take him by the hand (take him by the hand). At first glance, the Akedah appears cut and dried: God “tests” Avraham’s commitment by demanding that Avraham offer his son, the only one he has left, as a sacrifice to God. And the traditional lesson of this parashah is that – especially on Rosh Hashanah – we trust God, we have faith that God will do right by us, we enter into the period of Asarah Y’mei Teshuvah believing that God will answer us, just as God answered Avraham’s unspoken prayer that his hand will be stilled from killing his child. Avraham has experience in trusting God; according to our Sages, the Akedah is the tenth such time God has tested Avraham’s faith.

Hearing Ishmael - Rosh Hashanah Day 1

In this morning’s parashah, Abraham sends his son Ishmael and his son’s mother, Hagar, into the wilderness at Sarah’s order in order to remove the threat she perceives Ishmael to be to Isaac. The two – mother and son – soon face certain death from starvation and dehydration. The text reads, “15 When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child under one of the bushes, 16 and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away; for she thought, "Let me not look on as the child dies." And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears. 17 God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is. 18 Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him." 19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water, and let the boy drink.” Why doesn’t God respond immediately to Hagar

When Evil Becomes Banal

Last winter, a colleague and I were featured in a URJ on-line discussion on the challenges of music written by composers – and texts themselves – that were and are considered anti-Semitic. How should we, as Jewish professionals and Jews, approach such music? While the initial focus had been on Handel’s “Messiah” with its triumphant vision of Christianity overtaking Judaism, it quickly moved to noted anti-Semitic composers such as Wagner. Just recently, the New York Times reported that a motion was filed demanding that the Los Angeles Opera’s citywide festival – in conjunction with its new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle next spring – “be broadened to include less objectionable composers, like Puccini and Mozart because it was, according to the petitioner (Michael D. Antonovich, a member of the LA County Board of Supervisors) an affront ‘to specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the

The Hazon of a Hazzan

I handed my credit card to the cashier at the nail salon a few months ago. “Cantor Audrey M. Kessler,” she read out loud. There was silence. “Cantor?” she questioned. “I thought your name was Penny.” “Um, no,” I responded, “Penny is who I am [ed. note: "Audrey" is my legal name], Cantor is what I do.” She politely nodded, an unmistakable visual sign that she had NO idea what “cantor” meant. She’s not alone. When I am asked “what I do,” I often find myself tongue-tied, Moses-like, tripping over my words as I explain the difference between my work and that of a rabbi’s. I have tried humor, as in, “the synagogue clergy equivalent of Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did but in heels and backwards.” I have explained carefully that I am the Jewish clergy who specializes in Jewish music and prayer. I have read dictionary definitions Periodically I am told of the many virtues of someone’s church cantor, a musician – not a clergy person – who leads a church choir. And ev

Kol Sarah

I'm going on record here: while I dislike her politics, values and philosophies as presented during her 2008 bid for Vice President, I dislike equally - if not more - the ugly language that's swirling around some parts of the liberal blogosphere in reaction to Sarah Palin's recent as-yet unexplained resignation as Governor of Alaska. The language is very ugly and not worthy of repetition. Too many posters/commentators sound positively obscenely delighted to rip her - and her family - apart. Change Sarah to Barack, Bibi or Hillary and you end up with hideous and repulsive racism, anti-Semitic and misogynistic swill. It's sickening to read and does nothing more than sink to the level of the spewers of filth on the extreme right wing of American political media spectrum. Last week we read about lashon hara and its consequences. In a little over a month we will observe tisha b'Av and note the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, brought about - the rabbis teach - by