What Can the Rabbinic Debate about Noah Teach Us About Equity?
I relate the debate from Bereishit Rabbah to This American Life episode 550.
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Maimonides' Laws of War & Talking About Gaza
Most of us have been avoiding the painful conversations with friends and family over Gaza. Why? It seems like we have no common frame of reference, and so it hardly seems worth it. In this Rosh Hashanah sermon, I do something a little bizarre: I use Judaism's main halakhic code about war -- Maimonides' codification of all the Torah's statements on war-- to illuminate the war we are at with ourselves. My hope is that it opens us all up a little to each other.
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Getting "Miracles" Right in Judaism and in Our Lives (Yom Kippur Sermon 2025)
Miracle may be the most misunderstood concept in Judaism. While some Jewish sects officially (like Chabad), and most Jews unofficially, construe "miracles" as supernatural interventions in the nature, as in Christianity, the Jewish tradition tends to understand the word "miracle" (in Biblical Hebrew: "nes") in a far more subtle way. In this sermon, I explain the true meaning of "nes" as "sign" or "that which is risen above the ordinary" to help us deepen our sense of God's presence in our everyday lives, and change our concept of God from a Being within reality to the Being that is Reality.
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Parashat Behaalotkhah: Grievance and Getting the Leaders We Deserve
In this long section of the Torah, where Miriam and Aaron are disciplined by God for challenging Moses, where Moses tries yet again to resign his leadership, where the 70 Elders to help Moshe go ahead and prophesy, but strangely nothing seems to come from it, I am struck by how much the parashah speaks to our time, where the strangest of leaders are getting elected. We learn from Torah that leadership is not just about being prophetic or charismatic or elected, leadership is relational.
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Pinchas and Superman as our Mirror
Rabbi Irwin Kula reminds us that when we engage deeply with Torah, it can serve "as our mirror" which illuminates our inner complexities, strivings, horizon of significance, so we can better understand ourselves, others, and the world. In this presentation, I note how the Biblical story of Pinchas (who gets his own name on a parashah!) is a little different than most Biblical narratives in that most generate debates that quote textual evidence, but Pinchas usually just has the binary of "you either read it one way or the other." In that, it is our mirror in a more immediate way than usual. I compare the Rabbinic view and legend of Pinchas as the Biblical "Superman" with the recent James Gunn movie, quoting from, among other places, the excellent essay by Will Rahn.
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