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Moses Died With A Promised Land: DT Simchat Torah
Why was Moses barred from entering the promised land? It upsets our sense of fairness. There must be a reason for this disentitlement, for how else to explain why the great leader, the one who brought his people from Mitzraim to the ecstasy of Sinai and maintained their sense of purpose through the desert to the very border of the Land could only gaze at it and never enter. Is this the reward for one who had sacrificed power and privilege for the complaints and burdens of a stiff-necked people, who endured forty years with them?
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/moses-died-promised-land
Posted on: 2017/01/30 - 7:36pm
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Prophets and Sages - Vayigash DT Eron
The difference between a prophet and a sage is where each discovers God working in our lives. The prophet studies the future and points out the opportunities for righteousness and goodness that we may encounter in our life's journey. The sage looks into the past and shows us how we made way for God's healing presence and loving power in the choices we made and the paths we followed. The prophet fortifies us with the gift of hope. The sage strengthens us with the gift of meaning.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/prophets-and-sages
Posted on: 2017/01/30 - 7:25pm
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Shemot DT Lewis Eron
One of the sad ironies of leadership is that leaders frequently come to believe the lies they tell and then make “reasoned” decisions based on those lies, often with disastrous results. As rulers of all sorts trick us by manipulating with such powerful emotions, such as our fear of strangers and our worry for our security, they, too, are tricked. They come to believe their own tales, get entangled in their lies. Terrible things happen, suffering increases, and policies built on lies lead, all too often, to disgrace, dishonor and defeat.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/trapped-our-own-lies
Posted on: 2017/01/11 - 5:15pm
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DT Va'era Steven Carr Reuben
Names are very important. They have a power all their own. There are names that inspired revolutions and overturned entire civilizations. There are names that have struck terror into the hearts of all who heard them. And of course there are many who claim that the sweetest sound that a human being ever hears is the sound of his or her own name.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/naming-divine
Posted on: 2017/01/11 - 4:39pm
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DT Vaykhi Steven Carr Reuben
A woman in our congregation once came to see me with a heavy heart. Her son was soon to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. She told me a sad but unfortunately all too familiar tale of enmity and anger, silence and deep-seated hurt between members of her immediate family. How her mother hadn’t spoken to her brother in years, and her father hadn’t spoken to her sister in years, and neither the father nor the mother (both divorced now) had spoken to each other for years either.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/courage-and-forgiveness
Posted on: 2017/01/11 - 4:25pm
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Vayigash - Plans
When I was sixteen my family moved from Santa Monica to Sacramento. I had just finished my first year of high school and had been selected to play drums with the SAMOHI jazz band in the Hollywood Bowl (which I did the night before we moved). I was certainly not looking forward to leaving behind all my friends and everything I had grown up with to move to a strange new place where I knew no one. But my dad had a new job, so move we did.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/if-i-had-only-known-parashat-vayigash
Posted on: 2016/12/22 - 11:59am
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Kaplan on Creation DT Bereyshit
The account in Genesis is perplexing to the modern person. We inevitably get bogged down with the first chapter of the Bible because it seems to conflict with our knowledge that comes from the scientific study of the natural world. Mordecai Kaplan being the modern man par-excellence accepted the scientific view of the universe but realized, of course, that the Torah has a different perspective in telling us about the origin of things. In this selection he focuses on the connection between the creation of the world and God's attention to Israel.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/kaplan-creation-explanation-jewish-mission
Posted on: 2016/08/22 - 10:05pm
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Nachshon - Jump vs. Pushed DT Bemidbar
At first glance this week's parashah, Bemidbar, seems rather tedious. After all, it consists mainly of the names of the heads of all the tribes, given in the context of a census of the Israelites taking place about a year after the events at Mount Sinai. However, one name in the census jumped out at me: Nachshon ben Aminadav, the head of the tribe of Judah. Nachshon is a very famous character in the Midrash even though he is barely mentioned in the Torah.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/nachshon-did-he-jump-or-was-he-pushed
Posted on: 2016/06/16 - 1:07pm
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Marriage - Bemidbar/Shavuot DT
Shabbat Bemidbar usually falls near Shavuot: the day designated as the anniversary of the revelation of Torah at Mt. Sinai. According to a midrash Shavuot is like the wedding anniversary of God and the Jewish people. In Exodus as the revelation unfolds, the position of the Israelites is described with a phrase: בְּתַחְתִּ֥ית הָהָֽר/betakhtit ha-har, which figuratively means “at the base of the mountain” but literally means “under the mountain”. To explain this the rabbis said that Mount Sinai was held over the Israelites like a wedding huppah.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/covenant-marriage
Posted on: 2016/06/16 - 12:53pm
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The Nazirite - DT Naso
Jewish tradition teaches that the Torah yields 613 commandments, which are incumbent on the Jewish people. One would think that this daunting total would be sufficient for most Jews, yet this week's Torah portion, Naso, teaches of additional regulations which one could assume under the status of being a “Nazirite”, one consecrated to the service of God. The haftara (additional) reading for this Shabbat narrates the story of Sampson, who according to the Bible was himself a Nazirite.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/nazirite
Posted on: 2016/06/16 - 11:29am
