D’var Torah – January 3
Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year! First and foremost, I pray that this new year of 2025 is filled with good health, great fortune, abundant blessings, happiness, and peace for you and yours. Without a doubt, one of my favorite movies is 1992’s Last of the Mohicans starring Daniel Day Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, and Wes Studi.[1] In a famous scene, an Englishwoman Cora Munro (Stowe) is about to be burned alive at a Huron village. The hero Hawkeye (Lewis) and the British Army Officer Duncan Heyward (Steven Waddington) intervene and both offer themselves up in place of Cora as they are both madly in love with her. Hawkeye declares to the Huron Sachem, “I am Le Longue Carabine! My death is a great honor to the Huron, take me!” In the end, Heyward sacrifices himself for the woman he loves. In this week’s parsha of Vayigash* we see a very […]
D’var Torah – December 27
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah! I hope this finds you all well. Nisim – Miracles. They are one of the great beauties and treasures of the Jewish faith- whether it be God’s splitting of the sea as Pharaoh’s chariots closed in and all seemed lost, God providing manna to the Children of Israel in the austerity and harshness of the wilderness, and of course, most apropos to this season, one day’s worth of oil lasting for eight, thus showing that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the Blessed One Be He, had ordained the Jewish victory over the cruel and tyrannical Seleucid empire. Like I said, miracles are wonderful. They are wonderful because they are extraordinary, literally out of the ordinary, and quite frankly out of place. And that is what gives them their revered and holy status. The problem is not with miracles but often with us. Many people come to depend […]
D’var Torah – December 20
Shabbat Shalom! I hope this finds you all well. We all have favorites – favorite sports teams, favorite restaurants, favorite holidays, you name it. It’s natural. We instinctively are drawn to some things over others, and there’s nothing wrong with that. On top of that, if our preferences weren’t already deeply ingrained, they are reinforced again and again through our education and other societal structures. Remember in kindergarten having to write down your favorite color, your favorite animal, etc.? Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having favorites unless it clouds or blinds our better judgement. In this week’s parsha of Vayeishev* we see such an example. Jacob openly shows his preferential bias towards Joseph, his second youngest son. Jacob lavishes Joseph with a multi-colored coat, which Joseph’s brothers see as a symbol of Jacob’s partiality.[1] Joseph does what probably most 17-year old’s who know they have an exalted status do…he […]
D’var Torah – December 13
Shabbat Shalom! I hope this finds you all well. There’s this man, and his passion is restoring and building boats. Fair enough, it’s a nice hobby. One day the man decides to build his dream boat, his magnum opus, something he’s always envisioned. He buys the finest lumber and parts, and spends hours locked away sanding, shaping, coating, and sealing the wood, building the engine, and crafting the bilge pumps. He blows off date night with his wife, forgets his daughter’s dance recitals and his son’s hockey games, and skips visiting his folks. Day after day, night after night, week after week, year after year, he labors on that boat. Even his conversations focus entirely on his project. Well, as one might expect, his wife divorces him, his children become estranged, and his friends give up on him. Finally, one day, his boat is finished. But when he looks at […]
