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Where were you on this day 25 years ago? Where were you during that earth-shattering moment on September 11, when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center—and the world as we knew it—came crashing down? Who did you first hear it from? Do you remember your initial reaction? Do you remember what the days and weeks that followed felt like? Looking back on that dark day in American history—perhaps one of the darkest within living memory for many of us in this room—what has chang

If you will indulge me for a moment, I want to walk you through a memory of mine. It’s a memory from my year in Israel as a first-year rabbinical student. A rather simple memory, but one that is so bright and joy-filled that it gives me hope for the future. As we sit here on Erev Yom Kippur and perhaps, God willing, the eve of the end of the war in Gaza, this is the memory that buoys me. It was a sunny spring afternoon in Jerusalem in 2009. Our studies at Hebrew Union College

I’ve never considered myself a moderate, centrist, or even slightly conservative. I have always felt fully aligned with progressive politics and the Democratic party—a leftist, through and through. I am a straight-ticket voter who didn’t need a voter’s guide as long as I knew a candidate’s political party. For the past 44 years of my existence, that has worked just fine. As a Jew and a rabbi, I felt that progressive politics were the American manifestation of my Jewish values

I like to think of myself as a good writer, a fast writer. But this particular sermon, the one that I am going to give tonight, I have...

The pendulum of Jewish life often swings from one extreme to another and, yet, always comes back to a sacred center. Anyone who has...