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?

THE POWER OF PRIDE

As many of you know, this summer, we fulfilled my promise last Rosh Hashanah to have a campaign against antisemitism that included signs on local buses. With a generous donation from someone who is not Jewish but who wanted to help us fight antisemitism, a small group of us worked with a graphic artist to create our Halt H8 campaign. In doing this, we were also fulfilling something we’ve heard again and again in conversations with groups of congregants as we worked on our strategic plan for the coming years: you want Temple Sinai to be more visible in the community and be a leader in the local community. I’m very proud that we were able to do this.

The feedback from the larger community was excellent. As a direct result of those buses, several leaders in the community and in the schools reached to me to talk about how to better fight antisemitism.

SHABBAT CHAZON

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.

(The rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.)

That same day Noah and Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, went into the ark, with Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons— they and all beasts of every kind, all cattle of every kind, all creatures of every kind that creep on the earth, and all birds of every kind, every bird, every winged thing.

BECOMING VISIBLE

The cover story in this week’s Jewish Journal is about Ben Freeman, a British activist for LGBT and Jewish causes. In the story, he recounts how much he hated being treated as ‘other’ as a young gay man and that he internalized this as shame about being gay. In his later teens and early 20’s, he began a journey from shame to pride in being gay, and one of the key moments was listening to Harvey Milk, the first elected openly gay person, speaking about the importance of pride and the legitimacy anger at oppression. For Ben Freeman, the shift toward pride was one of the most meaningful experiences of his life. What a simple, yet incredibly difficult thing it can be to simply be proud of who we are in all our parts.

KOL YISRAEL ARAVEN ZEH BAZEH כל ישראל ערבין זה בזה

(on the occasion of Lior Todd’s bar mitzvah)

Lior, as we gather here for Shabbat on this absolutely beautiful Vermont day, and as we begin to celebrate your becoming bar mitzvah, we also know that in Israel, over 1000 missiles have been fired from Gaza, and Israel has responded with air raids and the assassination of key terrorist leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. We gather on Shabbat to enjoy a bit of peace and wholeness, but we know that tonight, many people in Israel welcomed the Sabbath in bomb shelters and that the people of Gaza who have little power to control the terrorist groups that have hijacked their homes are also waiting anxiously to see where the next explosion is.

SING GOD A NEW SONG

Today I was having lunch with a new member here, and he was sharing what their family does on Friday nights. They light candles, have a few moments of silence, and then they do a practice called “Rose, Bud, Thorn,” where they share one thing that is blossoming and beautiful in their week -the rose, one thing that is an emerging area that with care might bloom- the bud, and one thing that isn’t going so well – the thorn.

I thought this was a beautiful Shabbat practice, and it fits with my theme for tonight which is “Sing God a New Song.” The “Bud” is exactly what I was thinking of, so at lunch when he described this, I wanted to share it.

#WINNING

This week, it has been interesting to compare what happened in the Vermont Statehouse yesterday and what we see happening in the national Capitol this week. In the Vermont statehouse where I was honored to give an invocation for the inauguration yesterday, there were three parties represented, and the administration includes members of all three parties. There was also more than civility in the ceremony – there was visible connection and respect across our partisan lines and our principled disagreement.