Holidays and Festivals

Tisha B’Av: Our Sufferings and Our Hope

Arielle Margolis — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 17:02:37 +0000

Tisha B’Av: Our Sufferings and Our Hope

Arielle Margolis Mon, 08/01/2022 - 10:02

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Rabbi Dr Bradley Shavit Artson (www.bradartson.com) has long been a passionate advocate for social justice, human dignity, diversity and inclusion. He wrote a book on Jewish teachings on war, peace and nuclear annihilation in the late 80s, became a leading voice advocating for GLBT marriage and ordination in the 90s, and has published and spoken widely on environmental ethics, special needs inclusion, racial and economic justice, cultural and religious dialogue and cooperation, and working for a just and secure peace for Israel and the Middle East. He is particularly interested in theology, ethics, and the integration of science and religion. He supervises the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program and mentors Camp Ramah in California in Ojai and Ramah of Northern California in the Bay Area. He is also dean of the Zacharias Frankel College in Potsdam, Germany, ordaining Conservative rabbis for Europe. A frequent contributor for the Huffington Post and for the Times of Israel, and a public figure Facebook page with over 60,000 likes, he is the author of 12 books and over 250 articles, most recently Renewing the Process of Creation: A Jewish Integration of Science and Spirit. Married to Elana Artson, they are the proud parents of twins, Jacob and Shira. Learn more infomation about Rabbi Artson.

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Holidays and Festivals

Summary

Tisha B’Av, by forcing us to recognize a trail of tragedy and a psychology of division, is the crucial first step toward transformation and transcendence.

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If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning; let my tongue stick to my palette if cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour.—Psalm 137

Whoever mourns for Zion will be privileged to behold her joy.—Talmud, Sotah

To believe is to remember. The substance of our very being is memory, our way of living is retaining the reminders, articulating memory. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the city did not simply become a vague memory of the distant past; it continued to live as an inspiration in the hearts and minds. of the people. Jerusalem became a central hope, symbol of our hopes.—Abraham Joshua Heschel

I remember a family trip several years ago to Jerusalem for my brother-in-law’s wedding. Late in the summer, Israel’s heat extends into its nights, thick and heavy. The week prior to Danny’s wedding, my wife and I were in Jerusalem, walking the city’s streets — now alive again with activity, development and people, savoring our chance to absorb its smells, sounds and character. With the coincidence of Tisha B’Av (the ninth of Av) and Danny’s wedding at the same time, Elana and I had a chance to mark the fast in one of Jerusalem’s many synagogues.

We chose Congregation Emet Ve-Emunah (Truth and Faith), where my father-in-law had become a bar mitzvah many decades prior. The congregation still met in the same basement, at the bottom of an old apartment building on one of the city’s winding side streets.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the synagogue, which was itself little more than a basement with benches, a podium and a ponderous wooden closet containing a few Torah scrolls, the attendants passed out candles to everyone present. To my surprise, they then turned out all the lights, punctuating the dark with a scattering of candles, one per worshiper. At the front of the sanctuary, his back facing us so he would pour out his song toward the Ark, to God, the Hazzan chanted the mournful words of Eikhah, the Book of Lamentations, describing the Babylonian assault on Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. and the suffering of its inhabitants.

The present dissolved. Huddled on low benches while mourning the Hurban (the destruction) of Solomon’s Temple, and of the Second Temple some two thousand years ago, I felt that Tisha B’Av seemed more compelling, a more potent symbol of the human predicament than anything in contemporary life. In the basement of a rebuilt apartment complex in Jerusalem, we fasted and cried over the ruins of ancient Jerusalem and the disappointments of the human condition.

Each year at the same time, the residents of Jerusalem enact a poignant paradox. Despite the fact that the city has been reunited, that Israel’s capital is now the home of a great university, impressive museums and concert centers, bustling commerce, vibrant new and old neighborhoods, once a year the people of Jerusalem, as do Jews everywhere, pause to mourn the destruction of their ancient city — our city — thousands of years ago.

To observe Tisha B’Av in Jerusalem is to allow the past to engulf the present, to induce a willful amnesia in the conviction that the resultant memory will be more true, more incisive and more real. To mourn the destruction of ancient Jerusalem is to deny the present its despotic hold on our attention, to affirm that there is much to learn from the past—about human living, about coping with despair and suffering, about redeeming the human heart.

Tisha B’Av is a day of mourning that originated in the year 586 B.C.E., when the First Temple—the one built by King Solomon some 400 years earlier—was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the Jews of Israel were forcibly deported east. At the same season, in the year 70 C.E., the Roman troops under their general Titus destroyed the Second Temple, ending an era in Jewish worship. Throughout the years, this day has remained a magnet attracting Jewish suffering: The Edict of the Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 and the expulsion from Spain in 1492 were both signed at the time of Tisha B’Av. The tragedy of World War I was initiated on Tisha B’Av, in many ways setting the stage for World War II and the murder of six million Jews in the Shoah.

For the past two thousand years, Jews have used this day as a sponge, absorbing millennia of suffering and abuse at the hands of pagan, Christian and Moslem persecutors, and more recently, Nazi, Communist, terrorist and White Supremacist assaults. Years of forced conversions, rape, degradation, pogroms, lynchings and murders contribute to a renewed memory and determination on Tisha B’Av.

Suffering alone cannot provide purpose to Jewish identity, but one cannot come to terms with what that identity has meant without grappling with the ancient and resurgent presence of antisemitism.

Suffering alone cannot provide purpose to Jewish identity, but one cannot come to terms with what that identity has meant without grappling with the ancient and resurgent presence of antisemitism. On Tisha B’Av, we mourn that so many people have hated so much. We cry over the consequent suffering of innocents beyond counting.

But this fast is not simply to record the endlessness of Jew hatred and Jew beatings. This day also marks the end of Jewish sovereignty, of the kind of security and self-confidence that can only emerge when a people controls its own destiny, lives on its own land, determines its future for itself.

Some two thousand years ago, on Tisha B’Av, Jews lost the power to cultivate our own character according to our own standards. Stripped of control, of the authority of our own leaders and laws, Jews became the subject of other peoples’ legal systems, other peoples’ cultural priorities and prejudices, other peoples’ armies and police. For two thousand years, we have developed a variety of Jewish identities and cultures, always judged by external standards, living as a persecuted minority, in countries we were told were not ours, we learned to keep a wary eye on how others would perceive our values, our symbols and our achievements.

On Tisha B’Av, then, we mourn our lost independence and our weakened self-confidence. We mourn our dependence on the whims and kindnesses of strangers.

Finally, on Tisha B’Av, we attend not only to history — the loss of a building and of national standing — we mourn a psychological and spiritual reality as well.

For our ancestors the Temple was not merely a place of worship and pomp; it was a symbol of wholeness. There it was possible to fulfill the desire of our Creator completely, to become one with God. Religion — tangible in form and simple in concept — provided a concrete way to expiate guilt, express gratitude, and share in success. By its very structure the Temple stood beyond time, offering the iron-clad assurances that God dwelt there, that all was well.

The Hurban destroyed that sense of well-being. Instead of providing a place where Jews knew exactly how to make good with God, the ruins now became a potent symbol that we all live in a world of inevitable pain and ultimate abandonment. Love affairs, so full of promise at the start, often slide into mediocrity or erupt into hostility. Careers fail to provide a sense of excitement or purpose — jobs are frequently lost or denied. Children and parents rarely fulfill each other’s dreams and expectations. Those we love move to distant places. Illness erupts into the best of lives; people die. Each of us, no matter how content we may be, live under the shadow of aging and our own mortality.

The Hurban symbolizes all that. There is no perfect place. The Temple, a projection of the harmony and unity that we perceived as children, has fallen before the onslaught of maturity, sexuality and death. On Tisha B’Av, we mourn the loss of that innocence. And of wholeness.

At the very beginning of the evening service for Tisha B’Av, the Hazzan rises to announce that “This year is the __th year since the destruction of the Holy Temple. Each generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt should regard itself as responsible for its destruction.”

There is no Temple. The world is still saturated with disappointment, disease and despair. Our task, simple to articulate and impossible to complete, is to begin the work of rebuilding the Temple — by restoring a wholeness to our shattered planet, renewing a bond of trust between humanity and its members, repeating the commitment made by our ancestors to nurture our covenant with God, to be a holy people.

Tisha B’Av, by forcing us to recognize a trail of tragedy and a psychology of division, is the crucial first step toward transformation and transcendence. In the words of the Talmud, “You are not required to complete the task, yet neither are you free to desist from it.”

Tisha B’Av signifies a willingness to begin the task, even though its conclusion eludes our view.

It is up to us to begin.

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Limits for Growth: A Dayenu Kind of Pesach for a Dayenu Kind of Year

Arielle Margolis — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 16:58:33 +0000

Limits for Growth: A Dayenu Kind of Pesach for a Dayenu Kind of Year

Arielle Margolis Fri, 04/15/2022 - 09:58

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Holidays and Festivals

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We are, none of us, perfect. We are, each of us, flawed and frail, having been raised by imperfect people, taught by imperfect teachers, part of imperfect and flawed institutions — how could we not be? On top of the normal existential challenges of being human and being Jewish, these last several years have piled unique burdens on us all: fear of contagion and disease; extreme isolation and loneliness; businesses and agencies struggling to reinvent themselves and many, many of them closing entirely. Domestically we have witnessed extreme partisanship unlike any we have ever seen, and globally we all face the terrifying prospect of runaway climate change. More recently, the world has witnessed the eruption of a Russian assault against Ukraine that rumbles with threats to all eastern Europe and the risk of nuclear conflict for the world.

These have been particularly brutal times.

And yet, there are also moments where the light shines so intensely, so truly, that had we lived only for those moments, our lives would be more than justified. Passover brings with it the timely and timeless reminder that the robust affirmation of gratitude, training ourselves to notice and articulate the blessings, remains a powerful antidote to despair, isolation, tyranny and terror.

The Hebrew word for Egypt, “Mitzrayim,” means “narrow place.” In the middle of the Seder’s tale of brutal slavery and the horrendous oppression our ancestors endured, Jewish tradition asks us to lift our gaze above the narrow, constricted world of slavery, to elevate our present through transformative affirmations of gratitude and hope.

It all happens in one of the Seder’s most popular songs, “Dayenu.” Its fifteen stanzas correspond to fifteen elements (corresponding to the 15 steps in the Temple on which the Levites and pilgrims would chant the 15 psalms of ascent (Psalm 120 – 134). The very words plant us in the center of Jerusalem, on Zion’s hill.

These psalms are known as “Ma’alot” songs.

IT’S NO COINCIDENCE THAT THE OPENING REFRAIN OF “DAYENU” IS “HOW MANY ACTS OF KINDNESS (MA’ALOT) HAS GOD PERFORMED FOR US.” FOR EACH NEW OCCASION …”DAYENU” ASKS US TO NOTICE, TO ACKNOWLEDGE, TO THANK OUT LOUD.

It’s no coincidence that the opening refrain of “Dayenu” is “How many acts of kindness (Ma’alot) has God performed for us.” For each new occasion — taking us out of Mitzrayim, dividing the sea, feeding us for 40 years, giving us Shabbat, bringing us to Sinai, giving us Torah, bringing us to the Land of Israel — “Dayenu” asks us to notice, to acknowledge, to thank out loud.

Especially now, in the latter days of COVID, as the world mobilizes to resist the tyranny of Vladimir Putin, as western democracies struggle to slow down climate change and work to restore civil dialogue, it is more important than ever to notice the occasions, large and small, when we know we are blessed.

Those moments are “Dayenu” moments—moments in which our ancestors taught us to say, “Had it only been for this moment, dayenu, it would have been enough.” Reb Yechiel Michael, the author of the “Likkutim Yekarim,” writes: “There are times when you are in an ordinary state of mind, and you feel you cannot draw near to God. But then in an instant, the light of your soul will be kindled, and you will go up to the highest world. You are like one who has been given a ladder. The light that shines in you is a gift from above.”

PEOPLE WHO ACKNOWLEDGE BLESSING CAN TAP INTO A RESILIENT STRENGTH THEY WILL NEED FOR TOMORROW’S CHALLENGES. WE KNOW THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES ARE COMING. CAN WE FOCUS ON THE BLESSINGS AND THE LIGHT NEEDED TO RISE TO MEET THEM WITH COURAGE?

We all have such moments, and our task as Jews, our task as people who love God and Torah, is to train ourselves to notice these moments. We do so to fortify ourselves for the struggles ahead. People who acknowledge blessing can tap into a resilient strength they will need for tomorrow’s challenges. We know the challenges and opportunities are coming. Can we focus on the blessings and the light needed to rise to meet them with courage?

The Blessings That Grow from Limits

One of the sources of blessing and light, paradoxically, are the limits themselves. We tend to obsess about the constraints imposed by limits without noticing how sometimes having fewer options and possibilities permits us to focus finally on what matters most, what gets lost in the glitter and busyness of the everyday. This renewed clarity flows from the imposed limits, in life as it does in ritual.

ONE OF THE SOURCES OF BLESSING AND LIGHT, PARADOXICALLY, ARE THE LIMITS THEMSELVES.

When I think back to pre-COVID days, I think of lives filled with social obligations and professional appointments. My rabbinic life involved frequent flights to communities around North America, Europe, and Israel. I loved (and love) those encounters, but it took COVID forcing me to shelter at home to realize how much I also love spending time with my wife, my kids, my family, my garden. Staying home gave me the gift of an hour-and-a-half of what used to be commute time. My daily prayer life improved, my exercise became more extensive and more regular. The constraints of the pandemic forced me to recenter and refocus. It allowed me to reclaim lost parts of myself, marginalized priorities now returned to center stage.

Had the virus only reduced my travel, but not let me reconnect with loved ones, “Dayenu”!

Passover offers other poignant examples of the blessings that flow from narrow places. This is evident in our telling of the story and in the beautiful mitzvot of the festival.

Think, for a moment, of the instant when the Children of Israel reached the sea. Facing threatening waves cresting before them, surrounded by pharaoh’s murderous armies catching up from behind, can anyone doubt that the extent of their gratitude — their “Dayenu” moment — rocketed out of the despair and panic they had to endure? So focused (and relieved) are they that they start to dance and sing as soon as they reach dry land on the other side.

Had the sea split and they had not been led across on dry land, “Dayenu”!

Recall the constraints that give the Seder meal its shape: no leavened bread on the table or in the house. That encompassing restriction birthed all the special foods for which Passover is known, starting with the ubiquitous matzah, and blossoming out in entire cookbooks of matzah-inspired foods for every palate. We are told we cannot eat after we distribute the fragments of the Afikomen, giving shape to the end of the Seder rituals. And we are mandated a series of unusual food items as symbols of the evening and our liberation, spawning a stunning diversity of beautiful Seder plates.

Had we gathered with loved ones to retell the tale and not inherited an international collection of distinctive foods, “Dayenu”!

As with the process of evolution, where the limits that life has to confront generate the very adaptations that make diverse and complex life possible, so it is that the very constraints of COVID, on the one hand, and Passover, on the other, generate so much of the silver lining that has surprised us along the way.

This is so even when we have been unhappy with the constraints, and sometimes especially when we’re dissatisfied.

The Sacred Role of Dissatisfaction

One of the challenges in discussing “Dayenu” moments is that it is easy, particularly for a rabbi, to fail to give due recognition to the sacred role of dissatisfaction. I am not saying that we should walk around all the time “Dayenu”-ing everything that happens. There are times when discontent is the call of the hour and the command of God. To be tolerant of the indifference, laziness and greed that is clogging and soiling our planet’s ability to sustain life is not only a mistake; it is a sin. To be selfishly content in a world of injustice, of Putin’s invasion, of the continuing threat of COVID, a world of starvation and poverty, is not a mark of spiritual evolution; it is a sin.

Knowing our predilection for indifference and false bravado, the poet Louis Untermeyer offered the prayer:

Ever insurgent let me be,

Make me more daring than devout;

From sleek contentment keep me free

And fill me with a buoyant doubt.

There is a sacred role for buoyant doubt, even as a part of this year’s “Dayenu” songs.

WHAT I AM SPEAKING OF IS A HIGHER CONTENTMENT THAT COMES TO US AS A GIFT, AN ACT OF LIBERATION FROM THE CONSUMING ADDICTIONS OF AMBITION AND ADULATION, WEALTH, AND FAME. THAT IS A WORTHY “DAYENU.”

What I am speaking of is a higher contentment that comes to us as a gift, an act of liberation from the consuming addictions of ambition and adulation, wealth, and fame. That is a worthy “Dayenu.” That is the moment we are fully aware of the work that yet needs to be done. We simultaneously hold on to the twin poles of “There’s work to be done!” and “It’s enough! I do not need anything else.” Such a “Dayenu” reflects a transformative blend of joy and contentment. And here I caution: In an age in which we are told that spirituality requires constant work, in my life, “Dayenu” moments require enormous prior preparation, but when the moments come, they come unanticipated, effortlessly, and uninvited. They require only openness. As Rabbi Abraham Abulafia writes in “Chayyei Ha-Olam Ha-Ba”: “Rejoice in what you have and know that God loves you.”

Rejoicing in love doesn’t take work. It simply takes not fighting so hard. The story is told of the spiritual seeker who spent every day of life running toward God. Finally at the Gates of Paradise, the seeker says: “Ribbono Shel Olam! I spent my entire life running after you; why did I never find you?” And God says: “I was trying to catch up with you the whole time.” The moment of “Dayenu” is a gift. It requires nothing more than standing still and being open, noticing what has been given to us as an act of love. It is not a prize to be won by aggressive behavior, by greater striving, but simply a willingness to experience joy and to love. As Shlomo ibn Gabirol writes in his “Tikkun Middot Ha-Nefesh,” “The fruit of contentment is tranquility. The greatest riches are contentment and patience.”

Can we train ourselves in this year of COVID and invasion to also cultivate contentment, resolve and patience? Can we teach ourselves to recognize the pure hesed that is ours at this moment and at every moment? Can we cultivate hearts of wonder and joy, aware of the privileges that are ours without our having earned them? Can we discipline our ability to love freely and to forgive freely those whose lives we share? Can we celebrate our own greatness? Love our own beauty? And because we are able to love ourselves with hesed, with “Dayenu”, we must muster the energy it takes to do the work of teshuvah, to grow toward the light; and because we love and forgive ourselves, then to be able to turn to those around us and also love them and fight for them? Can we open our hearts to feel this day, this moment, as “Dayenu”?

We stand on the brink of a momentous time, an opportunity to energize our communities, to revitalize democracy, to fight for survival and for peace.

IT ALL BEGINS WITH AWARENESS, WITH NOTICING ALL THAT WE HAVE, WITH GRATITUDE. IT IS AN UNSPEAKABLE PRIVILEGE TO BE ALIVE HERE, NOW.

We stand on the brink of a momentous time, an opportunity to energize our communities, to revitalize democracy, to fight for survival and for peace. And it all begins with awareness, with noticing all that we have, with gratitude. It is an unspeakable privilege to be alive here, now.

The poet e.e. Cummings puts these “Dayenu” sentiments into words better than mine:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
“and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)”
how should tasting, touching hearing seeing
breathing any – lifted from the no
of all nothing – human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I bless us all at this season of freedom with ears open to hearing, with eyes open to seeing, with hearts open to love and forgiveness and growth and learning. I bless us all, that when we step into our homes and schools and workplaces, look at our families, colleagues and communities, when we have the privilege to study a little Torah, to observe a mitzvah, to commune with nature or walk the streets of Jerusalem that we are able to exclaim, “dayenu.”

I bless us all that in in our homes and in our social life, in our commitment to making the world a place of wholeness and healing and inclusion, that we create such moments for ourselves and for others, such that this world reveals itself to be a great cosmic chorus of “”Dayenu,” and we are the singers in the choir.

Bradley Shavit Artson, a contributing writer to the Jewish Journal, is Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, ��ý. He is also Dean of the Zecharias Frankel College, training Masorti/Conservative rabbis for Europe.

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Judaism Open to the World

Michelle — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 22:08:16 +0000

Judaism Open to the World

Michelle Mon, 10/10/2016 - 15:08

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Podcast

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Holidays and Festivals

Summary

In preparation for Yom Kippur, we are so happy to share with you these words from our dean, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, where he paints the shofar as a perfect symbol for our Judaism, with its broad bell pointed out to the wider world!

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Yom Kippur

Rosh Hashanah

Elul

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Miracle within Miracle (Rosh Hashanah 2016)

Communications — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 18:00:16 +0000

Miracle within Miracle (Rosh Hashanah 2016)

Communications Wed, 10/05/2016 - 11:00

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Podcast

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Holidays and Festivals

Summary

Join Rabbi Artson, and the members of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California, for our dean’s annual Rosh Hashanah sermon. This year, Rabbi Artson, re-frames the High Holidays as a “wake up call” to the innumerable miracles in our lives that we might otherwise let slip by unnoticed

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Yom Kippur

Rosh Hashanah

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podcast

Q and A September 2016

Communications — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 18:06:17 +0000

Q and A September 2016

Communications Wed, 09/14/2016 - 11:06

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Podcast

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Holidays and Festivals

Summary

Join our Ziegler students for this semester’s first open mic Q & A session with our Dean, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson. Topics covered in this session range from politicians in Talitot, to questions for the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, to God’s favorite languages and the physical characteristics of angels!

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Yom Kippur

Rosh Hashanah

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podcast

We Gather At Night: God in the Darkness (High Holidays 2015)

Communications — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 18:53:38 +0000

We Gather At Night: God in the Darkness (High Holidays 2015)

Communications Mon, 09/21/2015 - 11:53

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Podcast

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Holidays and Festivals

Summary

“What does it mean to locate nighttime as the beginning of our festivals and Shabbatot?” Listen in, and prepare for Yom Kippur, as our dean explores the deeper meaning of this anomalous Jewish tradition with the Temple Sinai community on the eve of Rosh Hashanah!

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Rosh Hashanah

Yom Kippur

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How Do We Speak To Each Other? (RH 2015)

Communications — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 18:55:04 +0000

How Do We Speak To Each Other? (RH 2015)

Communications Thu, 09/17/2015 - 11:55

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Podcast

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Holidays and Festivals

Summary

In his Rosh Hashanah sermon at Temple Sinai, Rabbi Artson calls our American Jewish Community to come together as a loving family, and repair a relationship that has been deeply wounded by the many painful words that have been spoken during the past months.

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Rosh Hashanah

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podcast

My Light and My Salvation: Finding the David within

Communications — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 18:56:22 +0000

My Light and My Salvation: Finding the David within

Communications Tue, 09/08/2015 - 11:56

by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Abner & Roslyn Goldstine Dean’s Chair

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Vice President, ��ý

Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Podcast

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Holidays and Festivals

Summary

In this final “Lunch and Learn” teaching before Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Artson closely examines the 27th Psalm, a staple of the season’s liturgy, and guides us through an individual journey to face our own darkest foes with God as a companion and source of courage.

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