Nostalgia – Yom Kippur 5780/2019

I actually hated the song when I first heard it. Everyone was playing it, it was all over the radio, and at the local high school a dozen teenagers covered the song decked in clothes carefully selected to look nonchalantly thrown together from a thrift shop wardrobe....

Diary of Anne Frank

Just a few short weeks ago, I went to the the Indiana Repertory Theater to see their production of the Diary of Anne Frank. The truth is I have not seen that play in years. I know that I read the diary, and that I saw the movie, but most of the memory of it was gone...

Yom Kippur 5779/2018

Camp is a magical place.  It is.  I don’t know of any other institution that inspires in both children and adults the same deep love.  When I talk to someone about their camp experiences, their souls open up.  Even their body language changes, their eyes get larger,...

Judaism and Queerness

When I was in High School a number of my classmates and I were convinced that one of our teachers was gay. We didn’t dislike him at all because of this, in fact we loved him having nothing to do with our thoughts on his sexuality, but we just thought he was gay...

YIZKOR SERMON 2017

Most of the time, when they include a picture of an author on the inside cover of a book, they use a picture from the time the book was published, and a young, vibrant, 40-something stares out at you with a deliberate expression of thoughtfulness or intensity, ready...

YOM KIPPUR MORNING SERMON – 2017

I knew that this would be my last chance. After that year, never again be a Jew-in-the-pew, and so I had to make this holiday count. What’s more, I was in Jerusalem. There were at least 20 synagogues within a mile of my apartment. Each one that year had its own Yom...