This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, is probably most famous for the story of the Golden calf, but after that, there is another scene in Ki Tisa that to me is one of the most poignant and emotionally honest moments in Moses’ life: Moses, in the midst of all that is happening, blurts out:

Hareini-na et k’vodcha Let me behold Your Presence!

I have a question for you: during COVID, what has been your guilty pleasure in TV watching? A show you that might judge others for watching, but there you are?

“Israel is bewildered; They have now become among the nations Like an unwanted vessel.” Hosea 8:8

This line from the prophet Hosea have rung hauntingly true of late. This week, Amnesty International issued a report declaring Israel to be guilty of the Crime of Apartheid and calling for action by the international community. This but a couple of weeks after the siege at Colleyville, and on the same day that Whoopi Goldberg declared that the Holocaust had nothing to do with racism because Jews are white. For me, this is also in the midst of training after training and meeting after meeting about synagogue security, live shooter trainings, and how we protect our Hebrew schools without scaring our kids.

As you know, I just got back from doing a wedding in Sicily, the first in this town since the Jews were expelled by Spain in the early 1500’s. There’s a long and surprising history of Jews in Sicily, and I’ll share some of that during the oneg, but first I want to say how good it is to be back home. I love travel, and I happen to be adaptable to new places, and I’m pretty comfortable in new situations. As it turns out, that doesn’t include driving in Sicily.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayigash, contains perhaps the most moving, emotionally raw passages in the Torah. Joseph, now viceroy of all Egypt, has now seen his brothers who came to Egypt to ask for food, but he has not revealed himself to them, has not spoken Hebrew to them, and has only been wearing his fine Egyptian clothing. Joseph is understandably distrustful of his brothers, since they did, after all, first plot to kill him and then instead throw him in a pit to be sold into slavery. My brother and I fought all the time, and we are not close, but the worst thing he did to me was break things my mother loved and then fame me for them. I have trouble forgiving him for that, so how Joseph comes to forgive his brothers is always a bit hard for me to understand.

Each Candle a Question In the Talmud, the rabbis ask what I think might be the purist distillation of a Jewish question about Hanukkah. They ask: What is this Hanukkah?

Two weeks ago, in our Torah portion, Jacob, fleeing from his brother who wants to kill him, from his father who is betrayed, and from his mother and the only home he ever knew, Jacob a homebody, is out in the desert, alone, heading on foot to a far-off place he’s never been. Everything he has ever known is gone and he has no idea what lies ahead or if he will survive. He is in-between, and it is twilight, an in-between time.

As I’ve said, this week is Transgender Awareness Week and tomorrow is the Transgender Day of Remembrance for those killed by the frequent violence toward transgender people. This year, to date, 47 trans people in the US have been shot or killed by other violent means. Before Kaddish we will pause to remember them. We do so to show our solidarity with the trans community, and with the trans people who are members here at Temple Sinai, but we also do it because as Jews, we, too, know what it like to be attacked and killed just because of who we are. While we likely don’t all agree about every part of the Trans Community’s political agenda, surely we all agree that violence against this community is something that must be named and requires response.

This week was the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the violent anti-Jewish pogroms that broke out on November 9, 1938 across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Violent mobs, spurred Nazi officials, destroyed hundreds of synagogue and Torah scrolls. Acting on orders from Gestapo headquarters, police officers and firefighters did nothing to prevent the destruction. All told, approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were plundered, and 91 Jews were murdered. An additional 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Nazi, playing to type, blamed the Jews and made them pay for the damages. 

This week’s Torah portion, Toledot, is a treasure-house of troublesome, intriguing, entertaining and iconic stories from the oldest part of the Torah.

In it, we read of Jacob and Esau wrestling in the womb, and Jacob being born grasping the hill of his twin.