Torah Geek

"The Thicket" by Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik In San Jose, California, there is a small museum set in a beautiful garden; the front of the building is guarded by an army of ram-headed lion sphinxes similar to those found in ancient Thebes. It is the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, and inside there is a replica of an Egyptian tomb which you enter down a dimly-lit flight of faux rock stairs, designed to create the illusion that you are climbing down into an ancient pyramid, not a museum basement. Life after death was a paramount concern of the ancient Egyptians, and the tomb is a testament to all the measures they determined one could take to ensure a happy afterlife. The ancient Egyptians believed that whatever you depicted in your tomb would come true after your death, so every luxury imaginable was either placed in the tomb or painted on the walls.  The main room of the tomb was painted with a mural of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and depicted what the afterlife of the...

“Reshuffling Life” Sermon for Erev Rosh HaShanah 5777 Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik Temple Ahavat Shalom – Northridge, California What if you could arrange the events of your life in another way? Perhaps you wonder how different your teenage years might have been if only you had the knowledge you have now… or maybe some of us wish we still possessed the optimism and energy of our youth. We might imagine reordering entire days or years of our life. Author David Eagleman imagines a different way to organize the events of your life. In his vision of the afterlife you relive all of your experiences, but similar activities are grouped together. He writes: You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Once you make it through, it's agony-free for the rest of your afterlife. But that doesn't mean it's always pleasant. Eighteen months waiting in line.  You can't take a shower unt...

How many of you are here tonight because someone you love asked you to be here? Or because someone you love told you to be here? How many of you are here to connect with the Jewish community? To connect with Jewish culture and history? To feel connected to your family, whether they are sitting next to you or are across the country? How many of you are here because this is just what Jewish people do? How many of you are here to make amends with God? Tonight we are starting a journey. We will spend the next ten days climbing a mountain together, on a journey to the top. And when we get to the top, we’ll have more than a view of the path we took to get there; we’ll have a panorama of of the past year spread out beneath us. We will look back on our past, and out toward our future as well. Every year at this time we revisit the story of the akedah — the story of the binding of Isaac. God tells Abraham to take his son, his only son, the one he loves best, to the...