From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life – Details, episodes & analysis

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From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Temple Emanuel of Newton

Religion & Spirituality

Frequency: 1 episode/5d. Total Eps: 604

Bringing weekly Jewish insights into your life. Join Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz, Rabbi Michelle Robinson and Rav-Hazzan Aliza Berger of Temple Emanuel in Newton, MA as they share modern ancient wisdom.

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🇩🇪 Germany - judaism
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Shabbat Sermon: You Had Me At Hello with Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger

Saturday, August 24, 2024 • Duration 12:07

Our ice maker in our fridge broke again. I called the service line. You know the drill: obnoxious faux classical music, repeated robotic recordings, “we care about your business and will answer your call as soon as possible. Please stay on the line.” Finally my call was answered by a woman who said her name was Jennifer and sounded like she was answering from South Asia. I told her our ice maker saga and once she had gotten all the information, she sai,d “thank you ma’am, I just submitted this request and am waiting for a response from my manager.”

“Ok, thanks,” I said. There was silence. Then, since we were waiting on the phone together, I asked, “how’s your day going?”

There was no response.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m here ma’am.”

“Oh good,” I said, “How’s your day going?”

“Ma’am, are you talking to me?”

“Yes, of course, who else would I be talking to? I figured as long as we were waiting, we could chat.”

“Oh, ma’am, I am so sorry. No one ever talks to me, I just thought that you were talking to someone else. My day is going alright. How is yours?”

I was caught off-guard. “Wait, is that true? No one ever asks you about your day? Ever?”

“No ma’am. People just call to talk about their refrigerator and most of the time they are very upset.”

After the call, and after Jennifer had helpfully sorted my broken ice maker, I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation. What would it be like to be Jennifer? What would it be like to sit in a call center for 12 hours straight, answering calls from angry people who are uniformly short-tempered in a language that is not your own? What would it be like to be called a different name—something that’s easier for Americans to pronounce—and to exist unseen—where you literally can only respond with the scripted responses that the company has green-lighted? What would it be like to work in an environment where you never get to share your passions, your interests, or your dreams? Where you are so divorced from amiable human connection that when you hear, “how’s your day,” you don’t even consider the possibility that someone might be speaking to you?

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Shabbat Sermon: A Balm for the Unredeemed with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

Saturday, August 17, 2024 • Duration 18:20

Every Friday Shira calls her brother and sister-in-love in Jerusalem, Ari and Tziporit, to check in, to hear about their Shabbat plans, to hear about their children who are serving in Gaza or up north, and to wish them a Shabbat shalom. Two weeks ago they had a particularly evocative conversation. That week Ari and Tziporit had been blessed with a new grandson, and that very Friday night they were hosting what is called a Shalom Zachor, a festive gathering the first Friday night after the birth of a boy. Since the baby’s father had been on miluim up north for 8 months, and had gotten home only a few weeks before the baby was born, this would be an especially joyful Shalom Zachor. The conversation was about the delicious food they were serving, the gorgeous flowers and flower arrangements that we could see with FaceTime, and the many family and friends who would show up to share the simcha. So far, so good. And then Tziporit added: We are setting up the dining room, the living room, and the outdoor garden. And we are also setting up the safe room just in case there is a siren and everyone has to go downstairs to the bomb shelter.

Prepare for a gorgeous simcha full of love and joy and food and singing. Prepare for missile attacks. At the same time.

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D’var Torah: Observations From The Field by Dr. Rochelle Walensky

Saturday, June 8, 2024 • Duration 06:53

Dr. Rochelle Walensky served as the 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021-23), Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (2012-2021), and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital (2017-2021). Dr. Walensky is an infectious disease clinician whose research career is guided by a belief that the clinical and economic outcomes of medical decisions can be improved through the explicit articulation of choices, the systematic assembly of evidence, and the careful assessment of comparative costs and benefits. She has focused these beliefs on mathematical model-based research toward the promotion of global access to HIV prevention, screening, and care. Her ground-breaking work and over 300 research publications have motivated changes to US HIV testing and immigration policy; promoted expanded funding for HIV-related research, treatment, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPfAR); and led to policy revisions toward aggressive HIV screening – especially for the underserved – and earlier treatment in resource-limited international settings. In light of these contributions, Dr. Walensky has been an active member of policy discussions at the WHO, UNAIDS, the DHHS HIV Guidelines Committee, and the NIH Office of AIDS Research.

View the texts HERE

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Shabbat Sermon: A Story. A Coda. A Second Coda. with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

Saturday, June 17, 2023 • Duration 18:05

I want to tell you a story that has a coda and a second coda.

The context is college baseball. If college baseball is not your thing, if you have never followed college baseball, not to worry. The story, which I heard on ESPN Daily Podcast, is about life.

There is a college in North Carolina called Wake Forest, which has a historically mediocre baseball team called the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. The team last won the College World Series 70 years ago.

In 2010 a man named Tom Walter became the coach at Wake Forest. The lifeblood of college athletics is recruiting star high school athletes. In Columbus, Georgia there was a star outfielder named Kevin Jordan. In baseball parlance, Kevin Jordan was a 5-tool player. He could do everything that is required to shine on a baseball diamond: hit to get on base, hit for home runs, run, throw, and play superb defense. As a teenager Kevin Jordan was one of the most highly recruited high school baseball stars. He was drafted by the New York Yankees. He was courted by the most powerful and prestigious college baseball programs, which Wake Forest was not. And he was courted by Tom Walter, the new coach of Wake Forest. As Tom Walter would put it, calling Kevin Jordan was his first call.

As college coaches in all sports do, Tom Walter paid a recruiting visit to the Jordan home, meeting this young star outfielder and his parents. Tom Walter promised the parents: if Kevin comes to Wake Forest, I will take care of your child. I will watch over him. Both Kevin Jordan, and his parents, believe Tom Walter. The family made the surprising, unexpected decision to say no to the New York Yankees; to say no to the college powerhouse programs; and to say yes to a mediocre college baseball program that had last won a College World Series in the 1950s. They did so based on their intuition that Tom Walter was a mensch.

Roll the film forward. In Kevin Jordan’s senior year in high school, he started to lose weight. He could not eat. He could not hold anything down. He became slower, weaker. He went to lots of doctors, and they could not diagnose his problem. Meanwhile, his performance on the baseball diamond dropped precipitously.

That fall he went to Wake Forest to begin his freshman year. He no longer looked or acted like the superstar athlete he once was. He was very sick. At last he was diagnosed with having a rare auto immune kidney disease. He was in kidney failure. He took 35 pills a day, and was on dialysis three times a week, just to be able to stay alive. The only way he would survive is if he were to get a kidney transplant.

Shabbat Sermon: Tending To Our Soul with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

Saturday, June 10, 2023 • Duration 19:03

What character in the Hebrew Bible says, “kill me now”? What character is so burnt out, so dark inside, so spent, so worn down, that he does not want to live any more and literally says “kill me now”?

The answer is Moses in our reading this morning. Usually the Torah says nothing about its characters’ interior lives. When God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham says hineni, here I am, ready to do the deed. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? The Torah does not say.

In stark contrast, in today’s reading, upon hearing the Israelites complain for the umpteenth time, upon hearing their revisionist history that they used to eat fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic for free in the land of Egypt, upon hearing their demand for meat when there was no meat to be had, Moses finally lets God have it:

And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You dealt ill with Your servant,

and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this

people upon me? Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them…I cannot carry

all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me,

kill me now, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness.

Numbers 11:11-15.

We need to pay attention to this passage. Moses had an interior life, and his interior life was not being tended to, and as a result, he was in a deeply dark place. What is true for Moses is true for all of us. We all have interior lives. Jewish language for that is neshamah, soul. We all have a soul. And we need to tend to our soul lest we become burnt out, anxious, depressed.

Talmud Class: Asymmetry - They Have No Other Country, and We Do

Saturday, June 10, 2023 • Duration 45:30

For our last Talmud class of the year we want to leave you with a question to ponder about asymmetry—an asymmetry between Israeli Jews and American Jews.

For its 75th, Israel had a contest for what Israeli song best captures Israel? Israelis voted for the winner: a song that was composed in 1982 called ein li eretz acheret, I have no other land.

Here are some questions:

What is the essential message of this song?

What is it about this song that inspires Israelis to vote for it as conveying the Israeli condition?

What language, what adjective, would you use to describe the rendition of this song in the video, accompanied by photos of life in Israel?

The song, the lyrics, the video, all suggest a deep purpose and blessing, and a deep cost and heaviness, to living in Israel, but the narrator has no other choice: I have no other country. With all its challenges, with all the blood, sweat and tears, with all the wars and terrorism, with all the Israelis who have died in battle or from acts of terrorism, it is the only country they’ve got.

But we’ve got another country, imperfect though it may be. When the going in Israel gets tough, we have another home to come home to.

Their 18-year olds do military service in places like Gaza and Jenin. Ours go off to college. How do we think about that asymmetry? Is that just a fact of nature, like gravity. Or do we have a decision to make about how to think about and act in the face of this asymmetry?

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Shabbat Sermon: Strangers with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

Saturday, June 3, 2023 • Duration 18:32

I promise that in the fullness of time I will, one day, give a sermon that is not about the Boston Celtics. But today is not that day. We have to process Game 7. What happened on the court Monday night was not just a sad basketball story, if you happen to be a Celtics fan. It was also a confusing, perplexing human story.

How do we understand our team losing the first three games, including two at home, and then winning the next three games, including two on the road? How do we understand the Celtics’ stunning, last tenth of a second victory in Miami on Saturday night, and then their utter collapse at the Garden on Monday night? So hot, so cold. So dialed in, so not dialed in. So inspiring, so disappointing. Same team. Same players. Same coach. Same week. I had a friend who was at the game. OK, it’s Matt Hills, and he and Lisa were at the Garden instead of the Gann Chapel, which is why the team lost. But I digress. Matt observed that the teams’ body language told the story. The Miami Heat players were focused and intense. The Celtics were listless.

The intense team of Saturday night became the listless team on Monday night. I always think of this as the sudden stranger syndrome. What happens when somebody you think you know, somebody you know and love, starts acting so strangely that they become a stranger to you. You think who are you? I don’t quite recognize you.

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Talmud Class: Can the Concept of Surrender Help Us Reclaim Our Judaism?

Saturday, June 3, 2023 • Duration 45:23

Why do we do what we do as Jews? What is a mitzvah? Is it a nice thing to do, a commandment, or a cultural folkway of the Jewish people? If we don't believe in a commanding God, can we believe in commandment? If not, how can Judaism make any demands upon us? And if we do not allow our faith to make demands upon us, is it too thin and weak to be of consequence?

These were the questions that came up in last week's class about the essay by Elliot Cosgrove entitled "A Choosing People" published in Sources (Spring 2023). Rabbi Cosgrove diagnosed the problem: "The Jews I serve are not halakhic Jews living lives bound by Jewish law." p. 11. What to do about this reality remains elusive.

Enter the very next article in Sources written by Rabbi Leon A. Morris, President of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem (and son in love to our own Joel Berkowitz), entitled "In Defense of Surrender in Liberal Jewish Life." This is a fascinating piece conveying an important distinction that was new to me--and potentially very useful to us.

Citing the work of psychoanalyst Emmanuel Ghent, Rabbi Morris distinguishes between surrender and submission:

Ghent defined surrender as "a quality of liberation and expansion of the self as a corollary to the letting down of defensive barriers." Rather than abandoning or rejecting the self, surrender's "ultimate direction is the discovery of one's identity, one's sense of self, one's sense of wholeness, even one's sense of unity with other living beings."

Shabbat Shavuot Sermon: Control with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

Saturday, May 27, 2023 • Duration 18:32

Rabbi Samuel Chiel, of blessed memory, used to say: the Jewish people are not superstitious…kenahorah.

Recently I was an eyewitness to the birth, the thriving, and the death of a superstition…kenahora.

It happened in our evening minyan in the Gann Chapel, and it concerned the seating arrangement of two of our evening minyan regulars, Grant Finkel and Lisa Hills. Every night Grant sits in the section to the left, facing the bimah, in the second row. Every night Lisa Hills sits in the section to the right, facing the bimah, in the first row. That is how it has been forever. But one night, for whatever reason, only God knows, Grant Finkel sat next to Lisa Hills in the first row of her section. He had never sat there before. And do you know what happened as a result?

I’ll tell you what happened. The Celtics won that night.

They were in the midst of a playoff series. Their play had been inconsistent. The previous game they had not played so well in the fourth quarter and lost. But the night that Grant sat next to Lisa, the Celtics won a tough game on the road. Obviously, they won because Grant sat where he sat.

The next night, as folks walked into Gann at about 7:28, we said to Grant: sit next to Lisa again. He did. And the Celtics won again.

The next night, at 7:28, as folks walked in, Lisa and Grant came in as usual. But on this particular night Lisa’s husband Matt Hills also came in. We said to him: scram! You can’t sit next to your wife. The Celtics are playing! Sit a few seats away from your wife so that Grant’s magical powers continue to lift up the Celtics. Matt himself is a big Celtics fan. As it happens, that very night he was wearing a Celtics t-shirt. He happily complied. Grant sat next to Lisa. The Celtics won.

Then came the Miami series.

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Talmud Class: Is There Any Idea That Can Persuade non-Orthodox American Jews to Take Jewish Law (Halakhah) Seriously?

Saturday, May 27, 2023 • Duration 45:36

This Shabbat is the second day of Shavuot—a good time to think about our relationship to the Torah as a source of law (halakhah) that is supposed to shape how we live every day.

Problem: For most of us, it doesn’t.

The Torah says: keep kosher. Many of us don’t.

The Torah says: observe Shabbat. For many of us, Saturday is not Shabbat but another weekend day, not particularly distinguishable from Sunday.

The Torah (as the rabbis interpret it) says: we are obligated to pray daily. Many of us don’t. Perhaps we come to shul when we have a Yahrtzeit, or when we are invited to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or an auf ruf. But few of us actually believe we are required to pray every day. Witness that in our congregation of almost 4,000 souls, we average 20 to 40 people at our daily minyanim.

The Torah we received at Sinai posits a commanding God whose commands we are obligated to observe.

Few, if any of us, believe in that commanding God.

There is a disconnect between the commanding God we are supposed to believe in and the autonomous lives we lead, where we do what we want to do, when we want to do it.

How do we understand this disconnect? Can we solve for it, or at least ameliorate it?

To consider these questions, please read the attached article by Elliot Cosgrove, the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, “A Choosing People,” published in Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, Spring 2023. In addition, Rabbi Cosgrove was in dialogue with Yehuda Kurtzer in

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