Rabbi Widzer's Library

There’s a cartoon that circulates on social media periodically these days.  Two people are walking on the street and one says, “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”1  Doesn’t it feel that way sometimes?  Hasn’t it felt that way for a while?  In an interview on NPR a few years ago, the cartoonist who drew that piece, David Sipress, explained that he originally...Read more...

Over the summer, one of my wise colleagues made a joke on a rabbi chat group about High Holy Day sermon topics this year.  He said, “I would like to stand up in the pulpit and say, ‘Just like last year, community is good, antisemitism is bad, Israel is … complicated.  Shannah tovah.’  And then go sit down.”   (At least I think he was joking!)

Over these High Holy Days, I will talk about community, I will...Read more...

Before a big test, students will review their notes. Before a big game, athletes will warm-up and practice. Before an important presentation at work, adults will prepare. Before a difficult conversation, many of us may rehearse and anticipate what we will say.

Well, we have a big test, a big game, a big presentation, and big discussion coming soon! We have entered the Hebrew month of Elul, the month leading up to the High Holy Days....Read more...

Once upon a time, there was a camp named Kutz.  Owned and operated by the Union for Reform Judaism, Kutz Camp was its teen leadership training program, the summer home of NFTY, the North American Federation of Temple Youth.  Located in Warwick, New York, the best of Reform Judaism’s youth leaders from across the continent would spend a session or two there, learning leadership skills and creating community.  Some of you, I...Read more...

On January 12, 2007, a Washington Post writer named Gene Weingarten launched an interesting experiment.  He convinced a world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, to stand incognito at an entrance to the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station and play his Stradivarius violin and see what would happen.  Bell had just played to sold-out audiences at Symphony Hall in Boston.  A few months later, he would be awarded the Avery Fisher prize, the...Read more...

Eternal Spirit of the Universe:

We ask for Your blessing upon the Commonwealth of Virginia, traversing the centuries, from those native to this land, though the years, calm and tumultuous, as part of the great experiment called America.  May our Commonwealth always be a home to goodness, decency, and uprightness, and a beacon of the American ideal that each person is endowed by their Creator with dignity and...Read more...

My family claims that I provide my own soundtrack to life.  And I suspect that’s true.  I’ll catch myself humming a tune or singing a lyric from some piece of music that connects to whatever I am currently doing or thinking about.  Does anyone else do that?  I happen to be a fan of musical theatre, so it’s as likely as not that the song going through my mind, and occasionally out of my mouth, is...Read more...

On this Yom Kippur day of repentance and confession, I have something to share with you all.  It may not come as much of a surprise, but I do not like to exercise.  I am not, as they say, athletically-inclined.  The closest I ever got to a regular physical routine was my first year in college when I was a coxswain for the Freshman Crew team.  We were supposed to run all the way from campus down to the boathouse for...Read more...

I spoke last night about living with uncertainty.  After a year of spiritual dislocation, and enough ups and downs and spins and turns to give even world-class gymnasts a bad case of the “twisties,” I proposed that we have dealt, and can continue to deal, with uncertainty by being adaptive, changing and growing as needed; by learning to appreciate and be in the moment we are in, rather than continually worrying about something else;...Read more...

It’s nearly time.  As much as I would rather stay in summer mode, I feel obligated as your rabbi to remind you that we are nearing the High Holy Day season.  In fact, thanks to the quirks of the Jewish calendar, the month of Elul (the month before the start of the High Holy Days) begins on August 9.  And Erev Rosh HaShannah comes on Monday night, September 6.

That means it is time to start our preparation for the High...Read more...

I am so glad to report that Temple B’nai Shalom is reopening our building and resuming our in-person activities.  Elsewhere in this bulletin and in various other pieces of communication, you will find information about what we are doing, a schedule of when we are holding indoor and outdoor events and services, and many other details.  This is possible due to the tremendous efforts of our staff and lay leadership, who have thought...Read more...

The Jewish calendar is quirky.  It is fundamentally lunar, not solar like the “regular” calendar, so the days of one don’t always correspond to the same days of the other.  There is a leap month seven out of every nineteen years.  That keeps the holidays in their appropriate season each year, but means that the dates of celebration from one year to another may be weeks apart.  This is why we sometimes say that the...Read more...

Purim is a topsy-turvy holiday.  Everything we usually do to celebrate a holiday, we do the opposite.  We attend the service in crazy costumes, not nice clothes.  We interrupt the reading of sacred texts with noisemakers instead of listening with respect.  We play games instead of study.  We eat unusual shaped foods. (Ok, maybe we do that with every holiday – what shape is gefilte fish?)

A holiday where...Read more...

We live in a liminal time.  We are, right now, in the “in-between.”  We are trying desperately to be finished with what has been and trying hopefully to come into what will be.   We live in the doorway, on the threshold, between the past and the future.

This is where we are with the pandemic.  We have come through its initial stages and we can see the outline of its end.  But at the moment, we are...Read more...

On our American calendar, the month of November usually brings a focus on family and food.  With Thanksgiving as a highpoint, many people plan opportunities to see relatives, near and far, and orchestrate elaborate festive meals.   While this year may require a little more creativity, I have no doubt that food and family will get their usual attention.  Having managed to Zoom for all the rituals of a Passover Seder,...Read more...

In the late spring each year, the Reform Movement’s rabbinical arm, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, hosts a full three-day, in-person seminar for rabbis who will be moving to a new pulpit over the summer.  Called “The First 100 Days,” it’s designed to give rabbis tried-and-true tools to manage the transition and settle into their new position.  Among the pieces of advice traditionally given:  use the High...Read more...

I imagine many rabbis in the United States will be talking about the upcoming election during the High Holy Days.  It’s kind of hard not to, given its importance in our national life and its prominence at this season of the year.  Our role is to draw out the Jewish values that come to bear on this important event, not to make political prognostications or sway you to one side or another.  In fact, let me share with you two...Read more...

A story for this Rosh HaShannah eve:  There was once an old woman who lived by herself on the top of a hill.  It was an old house, one without running water.  Each day, the woman would take a long pole and place it across her shoulders.  On one side of the pole she’d hang an old bucket.  On the other side, another bucket.  Always the same buckets, always the same sides of the same pole.  Down the hill she...Read more...

As much as we would like to gather together for the High Holy Days, hundreds of us packed shoulder to shoulder in our beautiful TBS Sanctuary, we know that that just isn’t possible this year.  We will surely miss being in person togther, with the communal feeling of large crowds, standing close, singing in harmony all the familiar and meaningful melodies.  Instead, our High Holy Day gatherings will be online, watched on...Read more...

“These are unprecedented times.”  How many times in the past few months have you heard someone say this, or thought it yourself?

It’s true that we are living at a unique moment in history.  We are in the grasp of a worldwide pandemic that is bringing suffering and death to so many.  Economic disruption threatens our financial security.  The deep-seated scourge of racism that impacts society in ways both...Read more...

Hilchot Teshuvah – The Laws of Teshuvah – by Moses Maimonides

Teshuvah – Chapter Two

Translated by Eliyahu Touger

1

[Who has reached] complete Teshuvah? A person who confronts the same situation in which he sinned when he has the potential to commit [the sin again], and, nevertheless, abstains and does not commit it because of his Teshuvah alone and not because of fear or a lack of...Read more...