WORDS THAT BREATHE

If Kol Nidre is really an Aramaic legal formula, why do we keep singing it?

How to find hope when the world feels hopeless.

How to respond when life out there is so full of stress that we often want to pull back, circle the wagons, and just take care of ourselves.

Sermon: That Time My wife was spit on... in Jerusalem... by a Jew. AKA: Rejecting Tribalism, Embracing Discomfort

What’s with the raging wildfires and destructive flooding, the mass shootings and mindless meanness all around? How many more need to die to motivate Your mercy, to finally get You to act on our behalf? What the heck is going on with You, God?

How I found faith that got me through these tumultuous years.

May we be written for a good year in the Book of Life! And perhaps that will happen if we go back to basics. If we go back to kindergarten and be our best selves.

Write a letter or a make a video to your future self who will exist five or six months from now. Remind yourself about the silver linings you want to continue to embrace. Maybe, just maybe, you will listen to yourself.

I feel this sense of deja vu as we began to cancel plans and hunker down. Yes, the coronavirus-compelled communal self-quarantine descending upon our county, state and country felt vaguely familiar. Here's how we get through then and will now. 

A year after the Borderline shooting and the SoCal fires, we reflect on the first person experiences, and explore Torah's insistence that we take action in the face of danger, including mass shootings and changes in climate.

Don't Wait: Lessons from my father-in-law Murray Novembert. (Yom Kippur sermon)

Facing the trauma after the fires. If it can happen to the rabbi, it can happen to you too...

To be a Jew today Rabbi Paul Kipnes offers a definition for today's world.

It is time for us to lift the veil of silence around mental illness, talking about it and our mental health journeys. Especially in the Jewish community.

Teen Dani, an 11th grader, shared her mental health journey (through depression) to an overflowing synagogue on Yom Kippur.

What are Isaac's thoughts on the Akedah, when his dad almost sacrificed him? A first person perspective about sons and fathers.

Is Torah True? Is there a difference between scientific truth and religious truth? Does Torah offer us answers to the how or the why of creation?

Lessons learned while taking their last breaths. Reflections on bikkur cholim (visiting the sick) with David and Jerry. A Yom Kippur sermon.

Be Chesed. In the midst of this election, choose unlimited overflowing love as your response. My Rosh Hashanah sermon

After attending the Republican Presidential Debate at the Reagan Library, I came away with 5 impressions that related Jews and the Jewish future.