Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon Text Rosh Hashanah Day 1 Sermon Text Kol Nidrei Text Yom Kippur Morning Text
Kol Nidre Sermon – 2020 / 5781
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3qoNe15_-0[/embedyt] “All the Vows We Choose to Break”” On Yom Kippur in the year 2000, I had a decision to make. My rabbinical school classmates and I had traveled down to the Negev desert, to celebrate the Day of…
2020 5781 – Rosh Hashanah Day Congregation Shir Shalom Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein – “Finding Our Yellow Brick Road”
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrLFtukxFPI[/embedyt] How many of you are here for the first time? How many of you needed your GPS or map directions to get here? How many of you felt a little disoriented pulling into the Transit-Drive-In on Rosh Hashanah?…
2020/5781 Erev Rosh Hashanah – CSS Buffalo – Rabbi AlexLazarus-Klein – “The Scarlet Rope of Hope”
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-qHS8c4nrc[/embedyt]On a cool day in late August, my family and I went up to Ellicottville to Sky High Adventure Park to complete an intensive ropes course hidden in the mountains normally reserved for skiing. We knew nothing about what…
5779 Yom Kippur Day Sermon – We Are All Buffalo Strong
After ten years in Buffalo, I should know by now what it means to be Buffalo Strong. I learned it my first snow fall here when my office staff kindly instructed me that three inches meant I still had to…
5779 Kol Nidrei Sermon – Our Jewish Spit Test: What it Means to Be Jewish in an Age of Genetic Testing
About six weeks ago, I submitted my saliva to 23andme. Yes, I did the spit test. That means in any day now I will receive information as to whether I am, well, Jewish. In truth, all my life I have been…
“GOOD JEW/BAD JEW: REMOVING RED LINES FROM THE JEWISH COMMUNITY”
All right, let me ask you a question – Good Jew/Bad Jew? Abraham, binds Isaac on the altar, takes a knife, raises it and brings it this close to his son’s throat – Good Jew/Bad Jew? Sarah, takes in her…
“A Tale of Two Fruits: What the Carob and the Pomegranate Have to Teach Us About a Sweet New Year”
On Rosh Hashanah, we wish one another “Shanah Tovah,” a good year. Sometimes we add, “umetukah,” a sweet year. Tonight, I would like to talk to you about what it means for a year to be sweet, and what it…
Yom Kippur 5777 Sermon
“How the Jewish People Learn Grit” At one of the most momentous points in Torah, at the beginning of Beshalach in the Book of Exodus, the People of Israel finally freed from bondage, the Egyptian army fast approaching, the Torah…
Kol Nidrei 5777 Sermon
“Reflections on the Shema: Listening to the Deepest Recesses of Our Souls” Over the course of Yom Kippur, you may hear the words of the Shema sung in at least three different ways: There is the intense and forceful refrain…