Deuteronomy 31.1-31.30 (excerpted from Rabbi Alex’s Rosh Hashanah Day sermon. The full text is available below.) “Twenty years have passed since 9/11 and yet memories of that day linger as if they happened yesterday. In the space of a few…
5782 – 2021 High Holy Days Sermons
Erev Rosh Hashanah – “Finding our way back home together” [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0du9phbZxg[/embedyt] Rosh Hashanah Morning – “Learning to live in the shadow of 9/11” [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHrqFfRinw[/embedyt] Kol Nidre – “Sing Out to Yah” [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_oOt9XVgwk[/embedyt] Yom Kippur – “Our Tests…
Torah Thoughts – Ki Tavo – Deuteronomy.26.1-29.8 – “The Key to the Hebrew Word Ki”
Deuteronomy.26.1-29.8 For the second time in two weeks, the name of the Torah portion begins with the Hebrew word Ki– כי. In last week’s Torah portion Ki Teitzei, Ki means when, as when you go out to war these are…
Torah Thoughts – Ki Teitzei – Deuteronomy 21.10-25.19 – “When we go to war…”
Deuteronomy 21.10-25.19 This phrase which begins this week’s Torah Portion, Ki Teitzei, should conclude with the words “nothing good.” War is the antithesis of life and love and all that makes human life worthwhile. Indeed, the very first verses of…
Torah Thoughts – Shoftim – Deuteronomy.16.18-21.9 – “Goodbye Texas Ranch”
Deuteronomy.16.18-21.9 On the edge of the Eilat beach resorts in Southern Israel was – up until 2019 – one of the strangest sights you could ever encounter in the Holy Land – a Wild West Town. Not the Middle Eastern…
Torah Thoughts – Re’eh – Deuteronomy 11.26-16.17 – “Even hard times can be blessed”
The opening verse of this week’s Torah portion asks the important question: “see, today I put before you both a blessing and a curse,” choose? For our ancestors this was more of a threat than a choice – follow God…
Torah Thoughts – Vetchanan – Deuteronomy 3.23-7.11 – “Moses the True Olympian”
Deuteronomy 3.23-7.11 If Moses was an Olympic athlete, he would be the one who excels at all the trials and then gets injured before the events begin. Or better yet, the athlete who aged out of competition because of the…
Torah Thoughts – Devarim – “Why Words Matter”
Deuteronomy.1.1-3.22 Vamoose (to depart quickly), gewgaw (a showy trifle), and fewtrils (things of little value), are just some of the thousands of words participants had to spell at the Scripps National Spelling Bee last week. The winning word spelled by…
Torah Thoughts – Matot-Masei – Numbers.30.2-36.13 -“Have Torah Will Travel”
Numbers.30.2-36.13 Forty years ago, the small burgeoning Jewish community in the Southtowns needed a Torah. This collection of Jews spread out in Alden, Hamburg, East Aurora and Orchard Park, would be holding regular services and life cycle events. Contacting a…
Torah Thoughts – Pinchas – Numbers.25.10-30.1 – “Our Ninth Anniversary”
Pinchas – Numbers.25.10-30.1 On the morning of July 1, 2012. our community gathered at the former Temple Sinai building on Alberta Drive to bid goodbye to that spiritual home and to begin our 3-mile journey, Torahs in hand, to the…