Description
One quiet Shabbat morning in August, a long-time member comes in and says, Rabbi, I turn 93 today. Can I have an Aliyah? I said of course. We’d love to give you an Aliyah. Just want you to know one thing. You are a youngster.
A youngster? I’m turning 93 today. How is that a youngster?
I pointed in the direction of a woman who was sitting with her children, grandchildren and extended mishpacha. I said we are doing an Aliyah today for that woman surrounded by her family because she just turned 103.
Without skipping a beat, he says: Is she single?
That’s what I want to talk about today. The good stuff. The lightness, the laughter, the loveliness, that have been so hard to come by this past year. There has obviously been a deep heaviness all year. And we are not done with that heaviness. The wars are ongoing. Our worry is ongoing. The heartbreak caused by Helene and Milton is ongoing. And yet, we are not wired to live in heaviness indefinitely. We cannot live in heaviness indefinitely. We crave hope. We crave uplift. Even now. Especially now. And so I want to talk about finding hope, but with a particular angle. How do we find hope when it sometimes feels like hope is gone? What can I do, what can you do, what can we each do to make our world a more hopeful world?
What does Naftali Herstik, a pre-eminent cantor at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem for 30 years, have in common with Bobby Allison, who was one of the greatest race car drivers in American history, who won 85 NASCAR races over 30 years? One is an all-time great cantor. The other is an all-time...
Published 11/16/24
We are plumb in the middle of two of the hardest stories in the Torah. Genesis 16:1-16 tells of Sarai’s continued inability to get pregnant, which leads her to assign her servant Hagar (literally the stranger) to Abram so that she might conceive a child with Abram who would somehow be reckoned as...
Published 11/16/24