This week’s Torah portion begins:

When you light your lamps, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand. (Numbers 8:2)

The word for “light” is an unusual one, and literally means to ‘raise up” or ‘cause to ascend.” Modern translations often say “when you mount your lamps,” but of course, Jewish tradition has had a field day interpreting the seven lamps of the ancient menorah that stood in the mishkan in the desert and then in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Arielle and Madeline, I know tomorrow morning you will give your d’vars on your Torah Portion, which is called Nasso. Because I know what you are going to be talking about, tonight I’m going to look at a section of your portion that I know you aren’t planning to explore: The threefold Priestly Blessing -

May Adonai Bless you and keep you.

May Adonai’s face shine upon you and look upon you with favor

May Adonai’s face rise to greet you and give you peace.

It is one of the best-known passages in the entire Torah, but it appears in your portion out of nowhere, out of context, and seems to be just stuck in there.

BAR MITZVAH May 3, 2024

But while this is a simcha, a joy, we are also living through some very difficult times as a Jewish community. The trauma of October 7, the mass protests against Israel weeks before there was any military response, the 400% rise in antisemitism that our community has experienced since then, and now the protests that are roiling colleges and country - this is a lot for adults to deal with and process, much less teens.

ISRAEL THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS March 15, 2024

We all know Lewis Carrol’s Alice Through the Looking Glass where a young girl’s is mysteriously transported through a mirror into an upside world of absurd characters and parodies of power. Tim and my trip to Israel felt to me like coming back out of the looking glass into a world that made sense and fit reality as I know it, and honestly, with that plane ride, it is a bit like travelling to another dimension.

WHO KNEW NOT JOSEPH January 5, 2024

So I’m not so good at getting out of my work gear. It takes me a few days to wean myself off and slow down. One of the ways I do that is to listen to new Jewish or Israeli music and figure out the guitar chords (that I am able to play) and make a chord sheet with the lyrics. If it’s an Israeli tune, I also spend time getting to know the lyrics, appreciating the poetry. That way I feel I’m doing something workish, but it is also fun and since there is no deadline, I can just have fun with it.

KOSTER RUACH January 12, 2024

Our Torah Portion this week, Vaera, is one that is well known to most of you even if you didn’t know that. It contains about ½ of the story of Passover, and contains the verses that make up the heart of the Haggadah. In it, having fled Egypt, encountered a burning bush, married, had children, and been commanded by God to save the Israelites in Egypt, our portion details those initial encounters between Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh and those pesky fickle Israelites.

CLOSE ENOUGH December 22, 2023

I grew up in a very complex family dynamic. As a Jewish family in the deep deep South during desegregation, in fact usually the only Jewish family in our small town, we got axes through our door and a cross on our lawn; we got bomb threats when my sister was named valedictorian and sucker punches regularly in the school hallways; we had more than a few friends’ parents that wouldn’t allow us into their home or come to their parties, so we had to depend on one another. We felt like we were all in on a secret that everyone else had totally wrong, but that wasn’t cool because it resulted in such sporadic hostility. Mostly I remember it being confusing. It also seemed to confuse my parents, which increasingly makes no sense to me as I age.

D’VAR TORAH October 26, 2023 13 Cheshvan 5784

When I was a Dean at Middlebury College, the words “Resistance is the Secret of Joy” hung over my desk. This line from Alice Walker’s novel The Secret of Joy, spoke to me. As a Jew, as a gay man, as a thinking person, and as a person of faith who also sees skepticism as holy, I had to resist a lot of pressure to be like everybody around me. There is a heaviness and a sadness to a life of resistance, but that line helped me see that there was also great joy and meaning in refusing to assimilate and blend in.

SERMON - Shabbat after Hamas Massacre  October 20, 2023

This Shabbat I want to take my text from the prophet Madonna, from her album, Bedtime Stories from the first verse of the title track:

Today is the last day

That I'm using words

They've gone out, lost their meaning

Don't function anymore

CITIES OF SLAUGHTER

Rise and go to the cities of the slaughter and you’ll come to the yards, And with you eyes and your own had feel the fence, And on the trees and on the stones and plaster of the walls, The congealed blood and hardened gore of the dead. And you’ll come from there to the ruins and stop before the destroyed homes, And pass by the pierced walls and shattered ovens, Where the axe’s head bit deep, to burst and deepen holes, Baring the black stone and shears of brick all burned, And they’ll look like the open mouths of black and mortal wounds. That have no remedy, that have no cure.

WHO BY FIRE

In 1973, Canadian poet and singer Leonard Cohen, 39 years old, at the height of his early fame, with hits like Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat, announced his retirement from music. It was a dark time for him, a time of depression and disorientation. He left the music scene in Greenwich Village and retreated to a rustic Greek Island without roads or modern amenities: the Greek Island of Hydra where he had bought a house for $1500 in the early 60’s. He went to Hydra to try and renew his spirit and figure out a direction for his life. On the day of Yom Kippur, he was lying in a hammock listening to the radio when he heard that Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise attack on Israel. He immediately jumped up, and without a plan, took a ferry to Athens and the first flight to Tel Aviv. The news was bad.

SHOWING UP

Welcome and thank you for joining us tonight.

There is something very powerful in showing up like you have tonight.

90% of life is just showing up.

When my partner Tim was choosing a project for his Senior Design Project at Georgia Tech’s Architecture program, he chose to design a synagogue. The first design rule was: The ark should face east; the second was that the sanctuary needs to be able to triple in size two days a year.

My family were High Holy Jews. Michelle Obama’s speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz was a High Holy Day Jew before a breakup led her to spend more time at a local Reform synagogue, starting a process that would result in her excellent book about Judaism: Here All Along.

THE YOM KIPPUR WAR AND THE WAR TODAY

Today, on Yom Kippur 50 years ago today by the Jewish calendar, at 2:00 in the afternoon, the air raid sirens began to howl, starting low and rising to that piercing clashing scream that flips your stomach. In synagogues across Israel, men started to get up and walk out of the synagogue, a few at first, then almost everyone. They were being called up for war. The armies of Egypt and Syria, armed with up-to-date weapons by Russia, simultaneously launched a surprise attack on Israel that came very close to destroying the country. The goal of those armies? To undo the humiliation of their losses in the Six Day War in 1967, and to undo the creation of Israel in 1948.

PALE BLUE DOT

When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth, God said to Noah,

“For My part, I am about to bring the Flood—waters upon the earth—to destroy all flesh under the sky in which there is breath of life; everything on earth shall perish.” (Genesis 6:17)

And on the seventh day the waters of the Flood came upon the earth…

All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,

And the floodgates of the sky broke open. , (Genesis 7:10,11b)

WELCOME 5784

I want to start tonight by inviting everyone to just close your eyes, take a breath, and put out your own wish for a good and sweet new year. What are you hoping for in the new year? For your family? For this community?