Sermons

As the rabbi of Temple Beth Jacob, I serve as the Jewish chaplain for St. Paul’s School here in Concord. And every fall, I am invited to speak before the student body, faculty, and administration when the entire community comes together for chapel time. Chapel time happens four mornings each week, and this year they had me come twice – right after Yom Kippur and during Sukkot.

St. Paul’s, as I’m sure most of you know, is an Episcopal school, though many of the students are neither Episcopalian nor even Christian. In fact, approximately 13% of the student body is Jewish, the second largest religiously identified group after Christians. The chapel time at St. Paul’s gives the community the opportunity to learn about many different faith and spiritual traditions.Read more...

In the Babylonian Talmud,[1] we read a story about Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son, Elazar, who had fled from the Roman government. They went and hid in a cave. A carob tree sprouted to provide them with food, and a spring appeared to provide them with water. With their basic needs met, they focused only on the most important thing. They buried themselves up to their necks in sand and studied all day, taking...Read more...

The video version is linked at the end of the D'var text.

Shana tova. My name is Morissa Sobelson Henn, and I am honored to have been asked to speak this morning. I grew up in Concord, nurtured by the TBJ family. Over the past two decades, as I’ve moved from apartments in Boston and Brooklyn to Salt Lake City, my continued membership at TBJ has helped me stay connected to...Read more...

Here we are again, attending our primary High Holy Day services online. A year ago, I would not have believed it if someone had said that 5782 would be a repeat of 5781. But it is. The Delta variant of COVID is making its way across our globe and nation, raising the previously low new infections rates, and infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated. Yes, the unvaccinated are a much higher risk of getting infected...Read more...

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which read, “I am blind, please help if you can.”

Only a few coins were in the hat – spare change from folks as they hurried past. A woman stopped. She took a few coins from her purse and dropped them into the hat. She then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. She put the sign back in the boy’s hand for everyone to...Read more...

For my first year of rabbinical school studies, I lived in Jerusalem. Jerusalem probably has more synagogues per capita than any other place in the world. You can find every denomination, every trans-planted community from across the globe, and every language. In the first few months I lived in Jerusalem I went to services often. And as the cantorial class groupie, I attended services with Shira and her classmates to hear liturgical music...Read more...