In How to Know a Person, David Brooks devotes an entire chapter to what he calls life stories. https://files.constantcontact.com/d3875897501/1021ea46-026b-4259-9de3-6f87a6cefd69.pdf?rdr=true "Coming up with a personal story is centrally important to leading a meaningful life. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell your story. You can’t have a stable identity unless you take the inchoate events of your life and give your life meaning by turning the events into a coherent...

Last Sunday evening Shira and I were in Lakewood, New Jersey for a wedding.  Lakewood is the capital of the charedi, or ultra-Orthodox, world in America.  Lakewood boasts a world-famous charedi yeshiva called Beth Medrash Govoha which is the second largest yeshiva in the world, second only to the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem.  The wedding was charedi.  Men and women sat separately during the wedding.  Men and women danced separately after the wedding. There was a thick wall separating the men and...

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we encounter the well-meaning words of a loving husband whose consolation of his very sad wife did not work. Hannah could not get pregnant. Her husband Elkanah’s other wife Peninnah got pregnant easily and, the text notes twice, would taunt Hannah for her inability to conceive. https://files.constantcontact.com/d3875897501/3774939d-786f-4595-b167-b4fcafa95e06.pdf?rdr=true This happened year after year: Every time she [Hannah] went up to the House of the...

I have a question for you this morning. How do we keep clean and pristine things clean and pristine? Imagine that in your home, in your living room, you have a sofa. The sofa is clean and pristine. The sofa is white. How do you keep your white sofa white? How do you think about inviting a family for dinner that has, say, a four-child old child? Let’s further stipulate that that four-year old child loves chocolate and has chocolaty fingers. How do you think about the prospect of those...

Our ice maker in our fridge broke again. I called the service line. You know the drill: obnoxious faux classical music, repeated robotic recordings, “we care about your business and will answer your call as soon as possible. Please stay on the line.” Finally my call was answered by a woman who said her name was Jennifer and sounded like she was answering from South Asia. I told her our ice maker saga and once she had gotten all the information, she sai,d “thank you ma’am, I just submitted...

Every Friday Shira calls her brother and sister-in-love in Jerusalem, Ari and Tziporit, to check in, to hear about their Shabbat plans, to hear about their children who are serving in Gaza or up north, and to wish them a Shabbat shalom.  Two weeks ago they had a particularly evocative conversation.  That week Ari and Tziporit had been blessed with a new grandson, and that very Friday night they were hosting what is called a Shalom Zachor, a festive gathering the first Friday night after the...

August 10, 2024

Friendship has the power to shape our lives. Join us this Shabbat morning in the Rabbi Samuel Chiel Sanctuary as our member Ruth Tepper and her dear friend, Brit Kammler, share the profound impact a connection first forged through grappling with the trauma of the Holocaust has had on their lives in the decade since.

Did you or your children go to summer camp? If so, do you remember the songs you or they sang? For me, my childhood soundtrack of classic summer camp songs is filled with silly ditties like “I Said a Boom-Chicka Boom” and “Sippin’ Cider through a Straw.” Throw in a “Zum Gali Gali” and a “Shalom Rav” or two, and it always made me smile that my kids are singing those same summer songs – a joyful summer soundtrack filled with ruach (spirit) and a camp legacy. Last week, I visited our Temple...

There’s a story that lurks in our family lore. I don’t remember anyone ever telling it outright. But it was there. Fuzzy around the edges. Bleeding into every day. When my grandfather was very young, his father died tragically. He went duck hunting, got pneumonia, and, without antibiotics, the infection quickly took his life. My great-grandmother was not only broken-hearted, but also understandably terrified about her future. It was 1927. Women didn’t work outside the home except under...

Last week I had two meetings that I just can't get out of my head. The first meeting was with an elder who has recently experienced some significant health challenges. He’s at an assisted living facility now where he spends his days being wheeled around by an aide, going where they take him and eating what they serve him. His wife passed away years ago. His memory is slipping. He’s dealing with significant health challenges. And yet, when I asked him how he’s doing, he said, “I am just so...

July 6, 2024

This week, we laid to rest a pillar of our community, our beloved Channah Berkovits. As we were reflecting with her family about her incredible life, I kept thinking about what a powerful teacher she was for me and for our whole community. Channah radiated positive energy. I remember when I first met her—she was this petite woman dressed in a bright purple suit, who seemed to always be here for every class and every service. Whenever she saw me, she would call me over and would start...

Do you remember those times in your life when you had to move? You moved from one house to another. Or from one city to another. Or you helped your parents move from the home they had lived in for 50 years as they downsized? Young couples deal with moving when they move into their first home together. College kids, and their hapless parents, deal with moving as they move from their home to their dorm room and from their dorm room back home, filling living spaces, basements and attics with...

Dr. Rochelle Walensky served as the 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021-23), Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (2012-2021), and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital (2017-2021). Dr. Walensky is an infectious disease clinician whose research career is guided by a belief that the clinical and economic outcomes of medical decisions can be improved through the explicit articulation of choices, the systematic...

Sivan Kotler-Berkowitz (he/him) is a rising sophomore at UMass Amherst studying Special Education and Psychology. He is passionate about transgender youth advocacy, working with kids with disabilities, and making the world a better place. As an advocate, Sivan shares his story as a thriving transgender teenager to help replace misinformation about transgender youth. Through his advocacy, he has appeared on national television, worked with Nike, met with officials in the U.S. Department of...

One of the best parts of being a rabbi is sitting down with a young couple that has just become engaged and is now beginning the exciting journey of planning their wedding day. That initial conversation always involves the sharing of the proposal story. Almost always there is an element of surprise. One partner does not know it’s coming or coming then. There is usually a photographer hiding in a bush taking pictures or a videographer hiding in a bush capturing the whole thing on video. There...

June 1, 2024

We could all use a booster shot of hope. Where do we find it? Tomorrow we are going to examine two very different models for finding hope in dark circumstances: Rabbi Akiva in the Talmud, Makot 24 A and B, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his epic Morality, published shortly before he passed away in 2020. Rabbi Akiva’s approach to hope seems to be about a new lens: Look at reality differently. Rabbi Sacks’s approach to hope seems to be about a new action plan: Act differently. What is the...

What, if anything, lasts forever?  What is impervious to the ravages of time? What can we do today that will still be talked about a hundred years from now? I have been thinking about these questions since May 13, which is the day that a great writer named Alice Munro died.  Alice Munro won the Noble Prize in Literature in 2013.  She was an absolute master of the short story genre.  I had never read her work before her death, so I started reading a collection with the title Too Much...

Kohelet famously teaches us that there is a time for everything under the sun. Does that extend to both moderation and extremism? Is there a time for moderation? Is there a time for extremism? What do our sources have to say about how we might think about the different appeals of moderation and extremism? We will consider two sources. The first is a famous love story between Rabbi Akiva and his wife Rachel. It feels like an extreme story. They fall in love, get married, and then spend two...

Dr. Michael Oren served in the IDF as a Lone Soldier in the paratroopers and then as an IDF Spokesman. He was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013, where he was instrumental in fortifying the US-Israel alliance and in obtaining U.S. defense aid, especially for the Iron Dome system. After his time in Washington, Oren served as a Member of Knesset and Deputy Minister of Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office. He spearheaded efforts to strengthen Israel-Diaspora...

Madness.  We all feel the madness of our time. How can it be that at the Newton Public library, groups of Newton citizens shout at each other, locked in mutual hate? How can it be that students at Columbia have to hear encampments where they can hear from their bedrooms "We love Hamas" and "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground" night after night—and the administration lets this happen, hate unfiltered? How can it be that graduation ceremonies are interrupted by hate? How can it be that Jews feel so...

It is 4:52 PM.  Our flight took off at 4:35 PM.  Eder has finished drinking his milk.  He’s done reading books.  He is not tired.  He does not want to sit still.  In seventeen minutes, he has already played with and discarded every toy in the diaper bag.  Now he’s screeching.  Solomon and I are passing him back and forth, trying in vain to appease him.  The good news is there are only four hours and twenty-two minutes to go. The woman seated in front of us turns around.  “You know, I think...

At Sisterhood's wonderful donor event this past Sunday, a woman shared with me that she had had a large extended family in Europe before the Shoah. The family members who said in the 1930s it will all blow over, don't be alarmist, all perished in the Shoah. She said her parents were paranoid. They said it won't blow over. The alarm is real. They got out before it was too late. She said I am only here because my parents were paranoid, and they were right. There is an edge in the air. There is...