High Holy Days

The Imperative and Gift of Jewish Joy

For as long as I can remember, my Judaism has been something that I valued, something that I loved about myself, and something that...

Rosh Hashanah 5784 / 2023

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THIS SERMON (Go to 1:30 in the video if you'd like to skip directly to the sermon.) While you might not recognize the...

A Sermon for Yom Kippur 2020

For months and months, I’ve been excitedly considering what I should talk about in my first High Holy Day sermon at my new congregation....

Following Channah's Example: A Prayer for Rosh Hashanah

The Haftarah portion for Rosh Hashanah comes from the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, and it tells the story of two, very unhappy women....

Kol Nidre 2019 / 5780

I was taught, and I believe, that the Torah is not the history of the world but is instead the Jewish people’s way of telling our own...

Rosh Hashanah 5780

Narratives that coalesce around a single person who is the only one who can perform a critical task are ever present and ever popular. I...

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5780

Figuring out what I wanted to speak about tonight was a very lengthy and difficult process. I started and abandoned several sermons until...

A Yom Kippur Sermon

When the first and second Temples still stood in Jerusalem, Yom Kippur looked significantly different than it does today. The ancient...

Kol Nidre 2018

Over the summer, I received a message from Rabbi Paul Kipnes, who serves a congregation in California. In addition to his pulpit work,...

A Rosh Hashanah Sermon

In tractate Sanhedrin 17b of the Babylonian Talmud, we read: A Torah scholar is not allowed to live in a city that does not have these 10...

Rabbi Rachel Bearman