Blessing for my daughter at her Bat Mitzvah

When we finished tying your tzitzit

you took the most important step of becoming a Bat Mitzvah.

It was not the act of tying the fringes;

it was the moment when you realized that it was yours. 

Truly yours —

not just as a possession, but something beyond that.

You made it yours by the work you put in

and by connecting each knot to your hopes and dreams,

to the things you are grateful for,

and to your own understanding of what it means to be a 

Jewish adult.

I made this tallit for you last summer with your dad,

but it is you who completed it. Today we will literally hand you the Torah, passing on our values to you, but it is up to you what you will do with it.

Just like your tallit, you will make Judaism your own.

The painted corners of your tallit represent the journey our ancestors took to the Promised Land, as well as your own journey;

these are my blessings for you at this stage in your life’s journey.

May you always be able to articulate your hopes for the future

as beautifully as you did when you tied the tzitzit

on the corners of your tallit.

May you be like the water, knowing when to let go and go with the flow. May you be guided by the wisdom of the Torah and our ancestors
even as you find your own way. May you climb the highest mountains

and know that you have the strength to keep going

even when you want to quit.

May you always know that you are never alone on life’s journey.

May you have the courage to be who you are

and to stand up for your ideals, even when it is not popular.

May you choose your own path

and never let others steer you in the wrong direction.

May you always have the freedom to be exactly who you are —

creative and inventive, passionate and caring,

and the coolest person I know.

May your love of books lead you to a lifetime of learning.

May you find expression for all your creativity

and share your gifts with the world.

May you use your strengths for good,

and may you come to know your own power.

May you remember that your actions matter —

that what you do in life matters,

so that you make a difference in the world for the better.

May all your dreams come true,

because you are the type of person to make them come true.

May you always remember that the blessing is in the journey.

May your eyes shine with the light of Torah

and may your face be radiant with your inner light

that you share with the world.

Yom Kippur Sermon - The Happiest Day of the Year

You can read my Yom Kippur Sermon here

Temporary Refuge

I am writing while I am sitting in my sukkah this morning. Sukkot is my favorite holiday and I try to enjoy my sukkah as much as possible during the week that it stands in my yard. My family and I eat, read, work and even sleep in our sukkah. I look forward to it all year and I am always a little sad to take it down at the end of sukkot.

This year I was not sure our sukkah was going to last until the holiday started — the winds were over 20 mph and I was sure the whole thing was going to fall apart. With lots of rope and sandbags my husband managed to keep our sukkah upright, but it was a very clear physical reminder that a sukkah is supposed to be temporary and offers little protection from the elements.

I sat down this morning to write about how much I love my sukkah and how part of my enjoyment is accepting that it is only temporary. And then my friend Rabbi Lisa Levenberg posted this article from the New York Times and I realized how trivial anything I could say would be.

It is amazing and beautiful and tragic. Emily Rapp shares her story about her love for her son who, because he was born with a rare genetic disorder, will never have a chance to grow up. She is painfully aware of the truth of Ecclesiastes (the book we traditionally read on Sukkot) that nothing is forever.

She writes:

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?

Depressing? Sure. But not without wisdom, not without a profound understanding of the human experience or without hard-won lessons, forged through grief and helplessness and deeply committed love about how to be not just a mother or a father but how to be human.

 You can read Emily's article here.

Rosh Hashanah Sermon

This Rosh Hashanah I talked about Google and how we need to let ourselves be uncomfortable in order to grow. You can read it here.

God does not control the weather

This morning I read that Michelle Bachmann is blaming the recent earthquake and hurricane on God. While this is not the only ridiculous thing she said recently, I take particular issue with her suggestion that she knows how God works.

God does not control the weather. I have written before about how hurricanes and earthquakes happen because they are part of nature—not to punish us.

Even if I did believe that God uses nature to punish humanity, how would Senator Bachmann know what we are supposedly being punished for? She seems certain that God is sending a message to politicians.

The antidote to Michelle Bachmann is this article by Rabbi Edward Bernstein. God does not use the weather to punish us, and certainly I can't believe in a God who would kill 35 people in a hurricane to prove a political point.

I do believe that there are consequences for our actions. Although God does not control the weather to reward and punish humanity, we certainly punish ourselves when we ignore science and fail to care for our ecosystem; we can't pretend that we have no impact on the earth.

Deciding to choose Blessing

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions...

John Tierney, The New York Times' science columnist, recently wrote an article about decision fatigue: the idea that our ability to make a decision gets degraded from making hundreds of small decisions throughout the day. The more we choose, the less able we are to make more choices.

The Torah (always ahead of its time) teaches us in this week's portion that there are only two choices we need consider: blessing and curse. Blessings will abound if you follow the commandments and curses if you do not- the obvious decision, in any case, is to follow the commandments. The portion then provides lists of commandments about where to worship, how to worship, what to eat, how to mourn, and how to celebrate the major festivals.

As Reform Jews we often struggle with the concept of mitzvot and what it means to be commanded. And yet we are very aware that we are all Jews by choice -- we define our Jewish identity by the choices we make every day.

A mixture of science and Torah can teach us how we can choose blessing in our own lives

I delivered a sermon about this at Temple Ahavat Shalom on Friday, August 26, for parshat Re'eh. Click here to download a PDF. Enjoy.

What I learned at Camp #5 - Take a Leap of Faith

 Riding the Zip Line at Camp Newman

Number five: take a leap of faith

While at camp this year Isaac and I got to try the zip line. A zip line is a long suspended cable that runs downhill—you put on a harness, climb to the top of a tower, and get clipped on to the line with a D-ring and a roller. You slide to the bottom of the hill, suspended in the air by the cable, cruising along at about 40 miles per hour, soaring over the trees, and when you get to the tower on the other side, someone lowers you to the ground on your rope.

It was lots of fun, but to get started you literally have to take a leap of faith. From the top of the tower you stand on a little platform and you have to jump off. You just jump and let the rope do the work. When it was my turn to hide my nerves at being up that high I asked lots of questions: What if I could not slow down when braking? How should I hold my hands? How hard do I tap the cable to slow down? Finally Tal, the young and tattooed Israeli woman who runs the zip line, yelled up to me, “Stop thinking and just jump!” I did, and the ride was great. Sometimes we need to just let go—to make the leap and have faith that we will enjoy the ride and land safely.