Choice-making narrows our world. Choosing to be a long-distance runner has inherent in it the choice to be often alone. The story of Noah gives us a sobering portrait of how some choices in God-following and truth-living can lead to seasons narrow or lonely - with Noah as an extreme example. Scripture also teaches us how people of truth survive such storms. We solemnly engage with this lesson this week.
The Hebrew word "HaBai'yitah" (Home) has been rich in the news as the remaining living Israeli Hostages in Gaza were returned home to Israel. "Home" is a sentiment deep in the heart of the People Israel in the Jewish homeland - and scattered across the world. "Home" for God-followers is a concept God defines: and His definition is worthy of serious contemplation. And so - we ponder, together.
We are commanded to rejoice exclusively for seven days, and yet we are conscious of the Hostages still in Gaza as we rejoice, like background radiation in everything we do. As Believers who seek to do God's will as revealed through His Word, how do we SANELY engage with life as life throws itself at us? We are not the first generation of God-followers to have such a balancing act made incumbent upon us. We explore together.
Since we cannot deliver perfection to God or humankind in our actions or ideas ... how can we live with reasonable "shalom" in a world filled with error/sin-committing-and-repeating creatures ... like ourselves?
Fresh from "Tashlikh," we are full of consciousness of God's mercy that leads to relationship with Him in this world (Olam Ha'zeh), and eternity with Him in the next (Olam Ha-Ba). We take a deep dive into God's mercy toward us - and right mercy toward ourselves and our fellow human beings.
AFTER the sermon is a 1981 recording by the musical group Kol Simcha of a song our Rabbi Bruce Cohen composed, arranged, and played piano on - based on Micah 7:18-20, one of today's Haftarah passages, and the very passage upon which Rosh HaShanah's "Tashlikh" ceremony is based. Shanah Tovah.
How do we get to "new" from where we are now? With all swirling about us in the news and our own human life-journeys, how do we genuinely walk in the spirit of the greeting "Shanah Tovah L'cha" - "A Good Year For You!" beyond merely practicing "mindfulness" on the purely human level?
The Haftarah for the Torah parasha Ki Tavo this week exhorts, "Rise, and shine!" This means someone is needed to arise, and some darkness needs light to shine into it." Judges 5 tells us, "Village life in Israel ceased until I arose ..." A person arose - and life restarted, and darkness was dispelled. How does this dynamic apply to each of us - now - today - in our individual arcs of influence?
[FYI - Sermon is only 11 minutes in length.] Continuation of the theme of "Ahavat Adam" ("love of all humankind) from recent sermons, "do not look out for your own interests, but for those of others also," (Philippians 2:4) ... an attitude Scripture tells us "was in Messiah Yeshua" and exhorts us to "let it be in you also." We are to factor in the interests of all humankind for whom Messiah offered up Himself. (Isa. 49:6ff)
In this week's Haftarah, God promises those who come to Him for guidance the same mercies given to King David, himself. What hope do we have of meriting such things as "the man after God's own heart" received from On High? Well ... given King David's nearly bipolar history of glories and errors – it turns out, our chances are pretty good. Let's study and see.
On the 2nd Saturday of every month, we have an abbreviated Shabbat morning service with no Torah Service or Sermon, so after services the synagogue's members and attendees can do "Nosh n Drash" – a communal discussion of the weekly Torah portion and other writings or ideas related to it. S0 - instead of a sermon, this week we share with you our Rabbi's reading of the weekly Haftarah portion from the Prophet Isaiah 40:1-11,, in the style we read the Torah in Beth El services, based on Nehemiah 8:8's clear description of how The Scriptures were read to Israel. Enjoy!
We continue this Shabbat with the theme of interwovenness: how our decision-making is guided by balancing what Scripture calls "our own interests" with "the interests of others" - and God's right as rightful Sovereign to "cast the tie breaking vote" in all our choice-making.
We learn this week how "me" is balanced by "we."
This week's parasha "Matot/Maasei" continues our learning from the situation of the daughters of Tzelof'had. Last week, his orphaned daughters asserted their rights, and God backed them up. This week we see them learn from God that their rights had limits, and needed to be exercised factoring in the overall calling of the nation and the needs of their fellow Israelites in their tribe, in regard to their own personal desires in romance and family-building. [After Sermon ends, there is a brief "Messiah Morsel" explaining an important text-artifact in this week's Torah Portion in the overall span of Messianic prophecy.]
God, Himself, declares, "I remember your devotion in your youth, the way you followed Me into a wasteland with no life in it." What grace! God remembers YOUR every choice following Him, even when it took you into lack or danger. We meditate upon this in the Haftarah attached to the Torah portion "Pinchas" – named for a person whose devotion earned from God an eternal priesthood.
Everything is not relative. That perspective can affect accuracy of understanding is genuinely an important consideration; but still, there are still some things and some stories that are true - and some that are not. This week's Haftarah gives a stunning example of an anti-factual "narrative" being used to justify stealing Israel's land; and the careful historicity of the Israelite Judge Yiftakh's fact-recitative reply – and then his deeds of resistance against the acts the false story generated. This is an important passage for people Yeshua the Messiah described as His crew: "those who are 'of the truth.'" (John 19:37)
In the parasha, "Shelakh" we see what became our synagogue's logo: the Two Spies carrying the "Eshkol" (cluster of fruit). They saw the "land flowing with milk and honey, and full of enemies. God stated several times in "giving" us "our own land" that it would contain enemies needing to be overcome. Why is God's "gift" He is "giving" to us full of enemies?
The "Aaronic Benediction" is described by God in the verse following it as "how you (the Aaronic Priesthood) shall put My Name on the children of Israel." It invokes God's very presence, His "face" to shine on us. When His presence shined on Moses, the face of Moses beamed light for long afterwards. How shall we "shine" in era in which God has caused us to be born and reborn? We ponder this together.
The statement in the opening of this week's parasha is in the Hebrew future tense, which can read as either a statement of a future event, or a command. Most read it as a command: but it takes on a very different flavor when it is read as a predication of the natural result of spending time with, and following God, echoing Messiah's teaching, "Every student who has been fully trained will (inevitably) be(come) just like their teacher." (Luke 6:40)
Rabbi Bruce's first sermon back from his six-month sabbatical. [NOTE: Please forgive the sound quality: the air conditioner above the podium was mistakenly set on "high fan" and loud fan noise had to be filtered out of the mix, affecting the overall tone while making the words understandable. This will not be the usual sound quality of the podcast.] Shalom!
"These are the things the Lord has *commanded* (not suggested for) you to do."
In this sermon for the weekly Torah portion "Terumah" (Voluntary Offering), Rabbi Bruce explores in deep detail and with personal examples how to replace unhelpful complaining with constructive realism.