From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Join Cantor Elias Rosemberg and Josh Jacobson as they discuss what you can expect at this year's Hanukkah Happens concert on Thursday, December 23rd, 2021.

The classic comedy “Miss Congeniality” has a montage of beauty pageant contestants, one after the other, answering the question, “What is the one most important thing our society needs?” They all give the same answer: “World peace.”  It is a long-running joke – that the notion young beauty queens can have anything to do with resolving long-standing geopolitical tensions is naïve, even slightly offensive. Enter this year’s Miss Universe. If you have been following the news this week, you may have heard that Israel is hosting this year’s Miss Universe competition. Of course, in the shadow of the unassailably ugly underbelly of antisemitism that Dara Horn captures so vividly in her book, “People Love Dead Jews,” greater than average controversy was expected – and delivered.

December 11, 2021

At the beginning of Thanksgiving, my dad and I spent hours combing through genealogical records, trying to find his grandmother.  During the pandemic, I read Dani Shapiro’s book The Inheritance and had opened a subscription on MyHeritage.com trying to uncover my own family history. My dad remembered that he called his dad’s parents Grandpa Loui and Grandma Becky. But he didn’t remember his grandmother’s maiden name or where she was from.  He told me that when they visited, they always showed up without announcing themselves and his grandma would prepare more food than anyone could eat in a week.  But strangely, you can’t search for a Grandma Becky who cooks too much and sometimes shouts in Yiddish on MyHeritage.com.  I found countless Grandma Becky’s in countless historical records but couldn’t find enough information to claim any one of them as my own.

December 4, 2021

It was only 17 years ago, but it feels like forever ago.  It feels like it was a different century when, in 2004, David Brooks wrote a book about America called On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.  His main point was that Americans lived in the future tense, by which he meant that whatever problems we faced in the present moment were not really problems because we imagined a future that would be so much better. Our house is too small, but no matter. One fine day we will live in a big and spacious house. Our income is too small, but one fine day we will have a better job which will generate all the resources we need for the life we want to lead. My health is challenged now,  but one fine day I will find the doctor and get the treatment that will have me feeling better than ever. Our children have not yet found themselves, but in the future they will be living just the happy life they dream of living. The key to living in the future tense is this limitless sense of optimism that the future will be better than the past. Most of us do not believe that today if we ever did.  Most of us ask a different question.  What if this is all there is? What if this is it? What if there is no one fine day?  What if the present moment is all we’ve got?

November 27, 2021

Enjoy our Shabbat Sermon from November 20th, 2021 with Rabbi Michelle Robinson

November 20, 2021

The story is told of a woman who feels that something is missing in her life.  She has heard that there is a wise yogi, a spiritual virtuoso, who lives and radiates holiness on the top of a mountain in a remote part of India.  She is told that this yogi holds court, and that people from all over the world make a pilgrimage to see him.  It’s not easy.  You fly to India.   Then you take a three-day drive on crowded and unpaved roads.  Then you climb the mountain, and it is steep.  When you get to the top of the mountain, you wait your turn.  There is a long line of seekers ahead of you.  And here is the catch.  The yogi is so in demand, there are so many people to see him, and he is reputed to be so smart, he just intuits things from a few words, that you can only say eight words to him.  This woman, in search of something, desperate to find it,  flies to India; takes the three-day drive on crowded and unpaved roads; climbs to the top of the mountain; waits her turn among the many seekers who have come to sit at the feet of the great yogi.  At long last, after all that,  she faces the wise yogi and says her eight words:  Come home, Sheldon, it’s time to come home.

November 13, 2021

Enjoy our Shabbat Sermon from November 6th, 2021 with Rabbi Michelle Robinson

It was a hot summer day in 2008.  Rick Mangnall was driving from his rural trailer home in Three Rivers to work at the Community College in Visalia.  Living out in the wilds of California, Rick was used to encounters with wildlife.  He was used to scorpions hiding out in his clothing drawers and popping out suddenly to attack.  He was quite adept at smashing them.  But that day, he didn’t see the scorpion that must have hidden away in his clothes.  He didn’t notice it until he was driving down a granite-lined street and suddenly felt the scorpion sting his back.  In shock, he jerked the wheel and his car veered off the road, straight into the granite wall, and then went airborne.  He landed upside-down, suspended by his seat belt. Rick remembers that scorpion sting and the accident, but he also remembers a moment which changed his life forever.  As he hung from his seatbelt, he saw an old white Ford truck stop across the way.  An immigrant man got out of the car and came over to him.  He put his hand on Rick’s shoulder and just stood there with him.  Rick was worried the guy might get in trouble, he knew the ambulance and police were coming.  He tried to tell the guy he could go, but the man clearly couldn’t understand him.  He didn’t speak any English.  But what he did understand, didn’t require language.  He understood that Rick was in a tough spot, and stood there with him, quietly offering support.  This year, when Hidden Brain put out a call for unsung heroes, Rick shared this story.  A full 13 years after his accident, the moment he still thinks about the most is that man who stood by his side.  As he shared on air, “I wish I had thanked him…”

Talmud from 10/29/21

Is a complicated first line an inevitable part of living a human and therefore imperfect life? Is worrying about the complicated first line, and how to avoid it, a healthy practice or a morbid neurosis?