Many people in this room grew up at CBE and are currently in college, which means that many people in this room were once 5th graders in Yachad, which means that many people in this room participated, once upon a time, in the great trial of Jacob versus Esau. You may recall that 5th graders find themselves preparing for months for an elaborate courtroom scene divided between Jacob and Esau, in which every member of the class is defending or prosecuting one brother or the other. They develop legal briefs. Parents come in to adjudicate. It’s the focal point of the year.
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Rabbi Timoner uses the relationship of Ishmael and Isaac to discuss Israel–Palestine, Dave Chapelle, and Black–Jewish relations.
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Rabbi Kolin discusses what we can learn about giving from Rebecca and the camel test.
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On Thursday night, I had the privilege of being in conversation at the public library with Masha Gessen, the brilliant Russian-American journalist and author who, in the pages of the New Yorker and eleven books, has warned us for years about the danger of Vladimir Putin and the threat of autocracy in the United States.
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On Saturday, November 5, 2022, Rabbi Timoner addressed the increase of antisemitism, the recent Israeli election, and the 2022 U.S. midterm elections in her sermon, which was mentioned in The New York Times‘ article, “Between Kanye and the Midterms, the Unsettling Stream of Antisemitism.” We are proud to share it with all of you.
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Wow, Eliza, you have spoken truth today. This is why it’s so brilliant that we have young people teaching us on Shabbat morning. They see things with fresh eyes that we have grown accustomed to, they say things out loud that we have conspired to keep silent about.
Thank you for that gift.
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This week, we have been witness to the shocking details of an unworthy insurrection which resulted in violence, chaos, and misguided actions that were built on a lie. I am of course speaking about this week’s Torah portion, parshat Korach. Sometimes Torah lines it up just right.
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I came across a post on Facebook this week that I sat with for a long time and then hesitantly re-posted. It’s by a woman named Leah Solomon who lives in Jerusalem. I don’t know her, I’m not even her Facebook friend. But we have friends in common and she works for Encounter, an organization that brings Jews and Palestinians together to listen to one another. I read her words and I want to share them with you in their entirety.
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The best parts of life are the surprises.
Here we have a story of surprise. The scouts are surprised that the Promised Land is a frightening place, with looming giants. Why would Gd, whom they trusted, promise them a land like this, with these terrifying people in it?
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I had a chance on Thursday to talk to our member Jared Dougall, who’s 18 years old, one of my son Benji’s closest friends (they met at Yachad), and is living and working in Tel Aviv these few months, taking a break from his first year at the University of Michigan. Jared is a really smart, thoughtful intellectual, and he and I have had many conversations over the years about Israel/Palestine, as well as all about American politics.
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Lucy, what a beautiful d’var Torah. I love that you connected rest to freedom, Shabbat to Shmita to Yom Kippur to Yovel (Jubilee). I love that you brought us two evocative teachings about t’ruah, the shofar sound that, according to the Mehilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, is the sound of breaking chains of slavery, and according to Ketav v’haKabbalah, the sound of fellowship and friendship.
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