High Holiday Sermons - 2025
Here We Go Again...
It is said that history never repeats itself, but sometimes it rhymes. We are facing new versions of old challenges and renewed feelings of uncertainty, anger and fear. How can we confront and conquer these old-new challenges, alone and together?
In an era of rising ethnocentric nationalism, compassionate humanism is out of fashion. The formerly unthinkable is very real: political murder, militarized immigration and law enforcement, mass suffering and dehumanization. How can we deal with the damage?
The Jewish world is fractured. Zionists and anti-Zionists (and the conflicted center), the Orthodox versus everyone else, the indifferent and the engaged, looking back in despair or looking forward in hope. Is “peoplehood” enough to keep us together?
New places, new ideas, and new situations can be hard to manage. They can also be a chance for life to get better! Jewish life has changed a lot over its history, and that experience can teach us to be ready for what’s next.
The world outside is in turmoil, and so is our psyche. Relationships crumble, the tension rises, family ties are fraying, stress is everywhere and always. Antisemitism and public unrest adds to our fear, and fear erodes our empathy and rationality. Is it time to give up, or to flee, or to face the challenge?
Jewish history has not always been disaster after disaster, but we have experienced our share of trauma, and then some. If the faith in divine favor that sustained our ancestors no longer resonates with us, where can we find the confidence to light our own way forward?
Even when it feels like things are out of control, people can make a difference if they work together and believe in themselves. Today we live longer and better than ever because of people power. Just imagine what we can fix for tomorrow!
It can be hard to forget the last, difficult weeks of a loved one’s life and to remember the good years before them. Anger, resentment, alienation do not simply disappear when someone dies. Looking back and living forward, how can we find the silver linings?