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yizkor 2024: The Claimant's Stone

10/15/2024 04:45:13 PM

Oct15

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

Today, we think of Yom Kippur as one of, if not the most, important of the Jewish holidays. Yet, Yom Kippur may once have functioned as a prelude to the holiday that follows five days later: Sukkot. The purpose of Yom Kippur was to purge the Temple of the accumulated spiritual schmutz–the technical term is tum’a–of the previous year. This way, the Temple was prepared and ready for the week-long Sukkot festival, with its many sacrifices,...Read more...

Kol Nidre 2024: Divine Glory to Flesh and blood

10/15/2024 04:43:15 PM

Oct15

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

Do you remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof, when Motel gets the new sewing machine? “Rabbi,” he asks. “Is there a blessing for a sewing machine?” “There’s a blessing for everything,” the rabbi replies. In the film, the rabbi then prays in Hebrew: May it be God’s will that the Divine Presence rest in the work of your hands. Not a bad blessing for a sewing machine, actually.

We do have blessings for so many things...Read more...

Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5785-2024: To Each Wave, I Bowed My head

10/06/2024 05:49:02 PM

Oct6

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

Once upon a time, a religious Jew was driving across the country. In Texas, he stopped at a diner, sat at the counter, and ordered some coffee. A cowboy sitting next to him asked, "Where are you from, stranger?” “New York.” “Well, partner, let me buy you a beer.” The man said, “Thanks, but I can’t.”...Read more...

Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5785-2024: A Thin Thread of Hope

10/06/2024 05:45:43 PM

Oct6

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

I had the opportunity to visit Israel just after Purim this past spring, on a long-planned group trip through Daniel’s work. It obviously ended up being a very different kind of trip, to a very different Israel, than what we anticipated when we planned it a year prior. One of the most difficult, but also most...Read more...

Yom Kippur / Yizkor 2023: Love is Like a braid

09/26/2023 11:08:29 AM

Sep26

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

To everyone’s surprise, including his own, the musician Paul Simon put out a new album this past spring. He thought he was done writing music, but one night, he awoke from a dream with the unshakable message from, well, somewhere, that he was to work on a project called Seven Psalms. He continued in this manner, rising in the middle of the night to jot down words that came to him, until he had written seven psalms. 

The...Read more...

Kol Nidrei 2023: High Eyes

09/26/2023 11:07:05 AM

Sep26

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

Exactly 50 years ago today, the State of Israel faced an existential threat. While the KTI community assembled in this very room to observe Yom Kippur, including some people who are still with us today, Israelis faced their own “who will live and who will die” moment. In a surprising move, Israel found itself facing simultaneous attacks from Syria in the north and from Egypt in the west, an attack that caught most Israelis by surprise,...Read more...

Enough (Rosh Hashanah Day 2 2023)

09/18/2023 09:46:12 AM

Sep18

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

Last fall, you may remember, we at KTI held our long-delayed tag sale. Back in the spring of 2020, knowing that many people were using the extra time at home to clean out unneeded belongings, we invited people to bring their tag sale items to the synagogue, planning, it turned out naively, to hold our biannual tag sale as scheduled in the fall of 2020. Well, people plan and God laughs. We kept delaying the sale, and stuff kept accumulating in...Read more...

Loneliness and Belonging (Rosh Hashanah Day 1 2023)

09/18/2023 09:37:54 AM

Sep18

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

Today, on Rosh Hashanah, you all see me standing here on the bimah. But that actually gives a misleading impression of what most of my days are like. On a typical day, I might go read a book to the children in our Early Childhood Program. They mostly pay attention, but it’s a long day, and they are only 3 or 4 years old, and sometimes they have trouble listening. Then, I might go teach our seventh graders in Religious School. They mostly...Read more...

Yom Kippur / Yizkor 5783: Regrets, I've Had a Few

10/06/2022 11:53:23 AM

Oct6

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

You can tell a lot about what people value in a life 

from what they choose to highlight when it ends. 

As a rabbi, I have the privilege and responsibility 

to attend more funerals than the average person, 

certainly of my age. And what they say 

about resume virtues versus eulogy virtues 

is...Read more...

Kol Nidrei 5783: The Heart Knows the Bitterness

10/06/2022 11:52:27 AM

Oct6

Rabbi Ben Goldberg

My senior year of college, some Jewish students on my campus faced a dilemma. You see, Yom Kippur that year was a Saturday. It so happened that there was also a major football game at home that day, with the attendant tailgating and other events that made it a major social occasion. For me personally, this was not a conflict: I generally ignored the football scene to begin with, and would have made the choice to fast and be in...Read more...

Thu, February 6 2025 8 Shevat 5785