I write this message with both a great heaviness in my heart and also with the most profound sense of gratitude. Nelson Mandela has passed away and the world has lost the rarest of individuals. We shall never again see the likes of Mandiba, as he is belovedly known in South Africa. For me, although […]

I want to be a Franciscan rabbi It has been less than a year since Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis. Yet, in the span of these several months, the new Pope has demonstrated by word and by deed his determination to transform the Catholic Church. His fundamental conviction that the Church’s overarching purpose […]

From time to time I like to recall my own Bar Mitzvah, which took place in Peoria, Illinois. You might think -Oh, the Rabbi- He had to have been perfect when he was 13! Guess again. I remember so well I was required to memorize my Bar Mitzvah speech, which had been ghostwritten for me […]

I want to speak with you this morning about that most widely used and most abused three-letter word in our language, spelled G-O-D. We must say the words “God,” “the Eternal One,” “Adonai,” and “Eloheinu” dozens of times over the course of these Holy Days. The question is: Can one doubt the existence of God and still be a good Jew?

Our music director has told me that the Kol Nidré and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah have something in common. Both are composed in an ambivalent combination of major and minor chords, a musical metaphor perhaps for alternating expressions of joy and of sorrow.