Mindful Torah...and more

As we prepare to enter Yom Kippur , the holiest day of the year, I would like to look at one of themost common texts of comfort in our tradition, Psalm 23, as a way to face the world in which we live moment to moment, and to help us in our task of Teshuvah (return or repentance). Though usually associated with funerals or the Yizkor (Memorial) service, Psalm 23 is a piece of biblical poetry that can speak to us in many different circumstances. In his book The Lord is My Shepherd Rabbi Harold Kushner analyzes the psalm line by line. I would like instead to break it into passages and analyze each of them with an eye towards understanding what the author might have meant when writing these words, what the words mean to me, and how I believe they can help us in our work of Teshuvah . I begin with the familiar opening passage: The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want. God makes me to lie down in green pastures, God leads me beside the still waters, and God restores my soul. God g...

This is a reworking of a Rosh Hashanah sermon I wrote a few years ago. I hope you find it meaningful. May you have a Shanah Tovah u'metukah-a good and sweet year! Shalom/Salaam, Rabbi Steve Nathan As this first day of the New Year begins and you sit in synagogue you may well ask yourself, "why on earth are we here?" You may think I’m joking, or perhaps just trying to wake you up from your slumber. Well, in part perhaps I am. But seriously I am asking you the question: “Why on earth are we here?” Are we here because it’s what we’ve always done? Are we here because it’s expected of us? Are we here because our parents, our spouse or children forced us to be? Are we here so we can be seen? Are we here so we can see? Or are we here because we feel like our life and soul are on the line and we need to pray with everything we’ve got? I would guess that most of us are here for a number of these reasons – if not all of them. But my hunch is that most of us ...

This week's Torah portion is Nitzavim-Vayelekh ( Devarim /Deuteronomy 29:9 - 31:30). It is one of seven parashiot /portions that is read as a double portion in a non-leap year order to assure that the entire Torah is read in the course of a single year. The parashah /portion is near the end of Moses' speeches to the people before he is to die. Nitzavim begins with Moses telling the people that he is addressing his remarks to all those who "stand this day, before the Eternal your God. To enter into the covenant God swore to your ancestors. I make this covenant, both with those who are standing here with us this day and with those who are not with us here this day." In the beginning of Vayelekh , Moses warns them that God has revealed to him that, after his death, "the people will go astray and worship alien gods. They will break the covenant that God had made with them. Many evils will then befall them, at which point they will say to themselves, "`surely it...

This week's parashah/portion is Ki Tavo (Devarim/Deuteronomy 26:1 - 29:8). The opening words, from which the parashah takes it's name (as always) mean "when you enter," and refers to the ritual that the people are meant to enact when they enter the Promised Land in the future and bring their first fruits to the priest. When the people bring the basket of first fruits to the priest we read (translation by Richard Elliot Friedman): "And the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down in front of the altar of YHWH, your God. And you shall answer and say in front of YHWH, your God: My father was a perishing Aramean, so he went down to Egypt and resided there with few persons and became a big, powerful and numerous nation there. And the Egyptians were bad to us and degraded us and imposed hard work on us. And we cried out to YHWH ... And YHWH brought us out from Egypt ... to this place and gave us this land ... and now, here, I've brought the first...