Rabbi Ed Feinstein Sermons

One Sunday morning, many years ago, as parents came to pick up their kids from the Hebrew School where I taught, I overheard a conversation. "How was class?" A father asked his son. The child began to whine, "I hate Hebrew School. It's boring and stupid, the teachers are mean and the kids aren't nice. I don't want to go any more." The father stopped, turned to the kid and said, "Listen, when I was your age I went to Hebrew School and I hated...Read more...

You won’t find this holiday in the Torah. If you look into the book of Numbers, this is all you’ll find: The first day of the seventh month will be yom truah, shofar-blowing day. That’s all. No apples and honey. No book of life. It’s not even Rosh...Read more...

This is the first holiday in 45 years that Rabbi Harold Schulweis will not be on the bima. In his memory we offer this sermon.

Elie Wiesel offered a parable about our times:

Once upon a time, Man complained to God: “You have no idea how hard it is to...Read more...

It’s Time We Talk: On Life and Death Rabbi Ed Feinstein Yom Kippur, 2013

This isn’t going to be an easy sermon to hear. It certain won’t be easy to give. But it is necessary. And Yom Kippur is the time to do it.

We call Yom...Read more...

It’s Time We Talk: On Being Jewish, Rosh Hashanah, 2013/5774

This year, I will not be delivering sermons. Sermons come from a place of spiritual confidence and security that I just can’t find. Too much tragedy and disruption came into the...Read more...

Look Mom, it's God
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

As I wheeled my shopping cart down the aisle of the local market on my weekly grocery run, a three-year old riding in his mother's cart came up the other side. He was one of the students in the Nursery School, and when he recognized me, his mouth dropped open, he pointed and shouted, "Mom, look, it's God!"

My young friend's comment is very instructive. We imagine God in the...Read more...

The Sermon on the Mall
Yom Kippur 2010, 5771 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

I want you to share a thought experiment with me. I want you to imagine that the economic situation in the country doesn’t improve in the next year. Instead of turning toward recovery, the world economy, and our national situation gets worse. Much worse. How this can happen? ….could be any number of causes: the Chinese could decide to stop buying our...Read more...

Leaving Mesopotamia
Yom Kippur 5769, 2008
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

In the beginning, there were two: Tiamat, the great goddess of the sky waters. And Ea, the deliberative, slow-moving god the earth waters. They co-mingled their waters and there were born all the gods of the world; gods of sun and moon and stars, gods of war and peace, of fertility and barrenness, of rain and drought. These gods were driven by their passions...Read more...

Hevre, Tnu Lee L’Halom. My Friends, Permit Me to Dream
Yom Kippur 2007
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

In Hawaii, you will stand on a beautiful beach and look out into the crystal blue waters, you gaze up at a brilliant blue sky, you will see hillsides covered with swaying palms, you will raise your eyes toward heaven and say: "Master of the World, You knew about this place and You gave us Canaan? Would it have been so difficult...Read more...

The Kol Nidre Code
Yom Kippur, 2006/5767
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

An historical mystery: you can call it, The Kol Nidre Code. The holiest moment of the Jewish year is Kol Nidre. The service is named for its opening prayer. But it's a very strange prayer, for despite its haunting melody, the words of this prayer are dry, technical and legalistic. It sounds much more like a disclaimer at the bottom of a contract than a prayer...Read more...

Globalization and Responsibility
Rosh Hashana 2005 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Genesis, chapter 11: Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words. 2And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard."--Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar.--4And they said, "Come, let us build...Read more...

The Wisdom of Jewish Adulthood
Rosh Hashana 2004 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Dear Mr. Feinstein,

Let me be the first to welcome you to the wonderful world of AARP. Attached you will find your provisional membership card. Fill out the membership application, send in your membership fees, and the world of AARP benefits will be yours.

And so begins my middle age.

American culture, it seems, marks the arrival of...Read more...

Recovering the Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King
Rosh Hashana 2003 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

On August 28, 1963, forty years and one month ago, a young preacher named Martin Luther King, ascended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, looked out on the crowd of a quarter million, and began a talk that changed the world:

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed...Read more...

Yom Ha-Atzmaut
Milken Community Center, April 16, 2002- Rabbi Ed Feinstein

I want to talk to the children tonight. Because I'm concerned for your souls and your faith.

You've heard that we are aggressors -- savagely invading, occupying, oppressing a sovereign people.

You've heard we have brutally destroyed their cities and towns, their homes and shops, desecrating holy places, turning once-thriving centers of life...Read more...

Finding Each Other
Rosh Hashana 2001 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Tevye: Golde, Do you love me?

Golde: Do I what?

T: Do you love me?

G: Do I love you? 
With our daughters getting married,
And this trouble in the town,
You're upset, you're worn out, 
Go inside, go lie down.
Maybe it's indigestion.

T: Goldie, I'm asking you a question Do you love me?

G: You're a...Read more...

The Pillars of Life
Yom Kippur, 1999

The Pillars of Life values. Out of this shattering catastrophe would either come the death of a people and its faith, or its rebirth in a completely new form.

There is no historical record of this conversation. But I can imagine what he said. For over the past two years, VBS has created a pioneering outreach program, our Keruv Center. We've opened our doors and welcomed seekers, Jewish...Read more...

The Quest for Oneness
Yom Kippur 1998 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

"Breshit bara eloheem et ha-shamayim v'et ha-aretz. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep. And a wind from God sweeping over the water. God said, Let there be light; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God...Read more...

Finding Diamonds
Yom Kippur 1997 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

There once was a very poor man who could only provide the barest, most meager of subsistence for his family...potatoes. Potatoes for breakfast. Potatoes for lunch. Potatoes for dinner. The monotony and the poverty of potatoes wore on him, on his wife, on his kids. And they said to him: Isn't there anything you can do to bring us home something besides potatoes? The man was...Read more...

The Tao of Judaism
Rosh Hashana 1996
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

When God contemplated creating the human being, according to a Midrash, He consulted all the angels of heaven. The angels of compassion said, "Let him be created, for he will perform acts of loving kindness." And the angels of peace said, "Don't create him! He will fill the world with contention, conflict and strife." The angels of justice said, "Let him be...Read more...

JEWISH SPIRITUALITY
Yom Kippur 1995
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

They say that Jews like ice cream come in 31 flavors. There are synagogue Jews, Federation Jews, Zionist Jews, universalistic Jews, cultural Jews, delicatessen Jews, cardiac Jews (Jewish in the heart), gastronomic Jews (of the belly), and many more.

The denomination divide us into four: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist. And as one pundit...Read more...

The Masterpiece
Rosh Hashana 1994/5755
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Once upon a time ... there was a king who built a great palace for himself. It was a magnificent edifice, each room and each hall greater and more impressive than the next. But there remained one hall in the palace that was still bare and undecorated. It was a long and narrow room with high walls. "How should it be decorated?" wondered the king.

He...Read more...

1. He comes to see the rabbi, because we're supposed to possess life wisdom. So he sits in my office and describes his problems.

He's 38 years old. Good looking, well-educated, successful, and desperately lonely.

He's been dating for 20 years now ... how many women? ... mostly Jews, but even a few non-Jews recently ... and he can't find a mate.

Have you ever had a sustained relationship? Yes, two maybe three lasted...Read more...

I love Jewish books. I attribute this to my fourth grade Hebrew School teacher, who regularly banished me to the synagogue library. I wasn’t a bad kid. On the contrary, I loved Hebrew School. But after a full day of quietly paying attention to the lessons of “regular school,” Hebrew School provided an ideal environment to meet people and to mix. And after being told three or four times “Sheket, Yitzchak, Sheket!” I would find myself...Read more...

Trick Or Treat
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

I take my kids trick-or-treating on Halloween. The truth is that you don't find many rabbis out on Halloween. Many of my congregants are surprised, even upset, to find their rabbi and his kids in costume celebrating a holiday that has definite Christian and pagan origins. And my kids certainly don't need any more candy in their daily diet. But something remarkable happens on Halloween,...Read more...

Pardon Me, Do You Have the Time?
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

In the office, I have a fast computer with E-mail and a modem, a fax machine, a cell phone and a pager. At home, a microwave/convection oven, a dishwasher, washer/dryer, trash compactor, cordless phones and cable TV. All designed to save me time. So, where's all that time? Why don't I feel like I have more time?

Time, as we know it, was invented only in the last...Read more...

When You Haven't Got a Prayer
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Very few people know that before she died, Evelyn Wood was hard at work on a revolutionary new speed reading program: "Davening Dynamics" -- for all of us left in the dust (or the pews) by the explosive speed of our liturgy. The truth is, we pray too fast. This is no surprise; in our culture, we do everything too fast --We drive too fast, eat too fast, talk too fast. But of...Read more...

How the Grinch Stole the Rabbi
Hanukkah, 2005/5766
by Rabbi Ed Feinstein

Every Jew in old Jewville, so loved their old shul,
Though it had not-enough parking, and no swimming pool.

On Shabbos and Yom Tov, it was standing-room only,
But packed in there together, no one got lonely!

There were too many classes, and not enough rooms,
So kids learned haftorah, in closets with brooms. 

Even...Read more...

The Grinch Who Stole the Latkes
A Hanukkah Story
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Oh the Jews of old Jewville, just loved holidays,
And kept them religiously, in all of their ways.

On Rosh Hashana, they ate apples and honey
Then came to the Temple, all dressed in Armani.

On holy Yom Kippur, they prayed and they fasted
Through rabbis' long sermons, they kvetched but they lasted;
Till Neila was...Read more...

"Wait," says Adam, "It has been so long, so many years, and I've forgotten. Remind me, what is it like there, in the Garden?"

"The Garden is Paradise." God replied, "In the Garden there is no work, no toil, no suffering, no death. In the Garden, there is no time. Day after day, an eternity of life. Come, my children, return to the Garden!"

Adam listened to God's words -- no work, no struggle, no pain, no death. A life of...Read more...

Before God created the human being, according to an legend of the Midrash, He consulted the angels of heaven. The angel of peace argued, "Let him not be created, he will bring contention into the world." But the angel of compassion countered, "Let him be created, he will bring lovingkindness into the world." The angel of truth argued, "Let him not be created, he will be deceitful and fill the world with lies." And the angel of justice...Read more...

According to my son, Disney's The Lion King is the greatest film ever made. He saw it three times in the theater, and insisted on playing the soundtrack every morning on our way to school. All the way to kindergarten, we sang the film's stirring theme song, "The Circle of Life," until one morning I listened to the words.

The Circle of Life may be humanity's most popular idea. Nature is all circles: day and night; the turning of the...Read more...

KI TEZTZE
Deuteronomy 21:10 - 25:19
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

A professor in Seminary once asked us to find the most important section in all the Torah. We offered Creation, the Shma, the Exodus, the revelation at Mt. Sinai. No, he argued, it's Ki Teztze L'milchama, Deuteronomy 21: "When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, and you see among...Read more...

Reeh
Deuteronomy 11:26 - 16:17
FOR A FLAME-BROILED WORLD
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

"Why does your God object to cheeseburgers?" a friend asked over lunch one day, "Why does He care?" A very good question. Why does a tradition so concerned with ultimate issues concern itself so earnestly with, of all things, cheeseburgers? First, please understand that it has nothing to do with health. The laws of Kashrut -- the food...Read more...

EKEV
Deuteronomy 7:12 - 11:25
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

He comes to see the me, because the rabbi is supposed to have answers. Sitting uncomfortably in my office, he describes his problems. He's 38 years old, good looking, well-educated, successful, and desperately lonely. He's been dating for 20 years now ... how many women? ... but he can't find a mate.

So, tell me, what are you looking for in a...Read more...

DEVARIM
THE LAST TABOO

I love answering kids' questions. I'll visit a classroom and face an eager chorus of "Did God create dinosaurs?" "Where do people go when they die?" Then at the end, there's always one wise guy, who smirks and asks, "What's the meaning of life?" I love that kid. I admire his chutzpah, and I love the question.

This may be the last taboo. In our culture, people are encouraged to reveal every intimate...Read more...

Twelve spies are sent to glimpse the Promised Land and bring back samples of its wonders. Instead, they return with fear, disenchantment and despair: "The land that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw were giants...We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves and so we must have looked to them." (Numbers 13:32-33)Envious of power and wealth, Moses' cousin Korah leads a rebellion to overthrown Moses....Read more...

Shelach
Numbers 13 - 15
A Bug's Life
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed-quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to...Read more...

Naso
Numbers 4:21 - 7:89
God Bless People Magazine
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Everything in Creation has a purpose, teaches the Midrash. But when someone gave us a gift subscription to People Magazine I was left to wonder if I had found the first truly purposeless thing in God's universe.

You know People -- the epitome of "lite" culture -- short, gossipy articles on the rich, the famous, the noted and the...Read more...

Vayikra
Leviticus 1 - 5
Rabbi Ed Feinstein

Leviticus 1-5n and prayer -- people who have found a way to family wholeness in a centrifugal world. Here are people who grasp the miracle of a simple meal and understand the need for regular expressions of gratitude in the course of daily experience.

It's only a little thing. A takes but a minute. But it has the power to change your life. Because it changes the way you...Read more...

Vayikra
Leviticus 1 - 5
Rabbi Edward Feinstein

How do the books of the Torah get their names? It's really rather arbitrary: Each name is simply the first significant word found in the first lines of the book. But by some powerful coincidence, these randomly chosen names capture and express the character and content of each book:

B'reshit, (Genesis) is a book of beginnings -- recounting the origins of the world, of...Read more...

Shemini
Leviticus 9 - 11
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Americans have an infatuation with leadership. Like the English philosopher Thomas Carlyle, we believe that history is propelled by "the great man" (Carlyle's phrase) whose values and energy animate the institutions in which we live. The success or failure of a business is ascribed to the strength of its CEO. The problems of state are described as a "crisis of leadership"....Read more...

Terumah

TERUMAHs life we acquire is emptied of life and spirit -- remote, removed, and alien. But should we encounter a community of friends, should ritual become poetry, should we find song and celebration, then a different sense of the sacred prevails.

The greatest gift a religious community can give its children is their sense of God. The troubling question is: what kind of God do our communities and institutions share with...Read more...

Yitro
EXODUS 18:1 - 20:23
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Once a stranger approached Hillel and Shammai, the great sages of the first century, with a request: "Teach me the Torah while I stand on one foot."

First, he brought the request to Shammai. According to the Talmud, Shammai picked up a builder's rule, smacked him alongside his head and dismissed him.

So he came to Hillel. "Teach me the Torah on one foot."...Read more...

Va'yishlach Decency:

"Am I my brother's keeper"? Abraham challenges the conscience of God: "Will You sweep away the innocent alongside the guilty? Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do justice?" And Isaac poses the question innocent martyr will articulate for generations: "Here are the firestone and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?" Joseph encounters a man at the crossroads of Shechem who asks him, "What are...Read more...

Lech Lecha
Genesis 12:1 - 17:27
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

"You know me, rabbi. You know how important the synagogue is to me, how much I enjoy services, you see me at your Torah classes. You know what kind of Jew I am: I am the only one at the family Seder table who can read the Hebrew side of the Hagaddah, but they won't accept me because I wasn't born Jewish!"

Every rabbi has heard these painful...Read more...

Hanukah Guilt... A Personal Confession
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

My son wanted to sit on Santa's lap. ..You can't, I replied. ..Why not? he persisted. ..How can you? I thought to myself... your mother is a rabbi, your father is a rabbi...how would it look? And so began our explanation: ..It isn't our holiday. Christmas and Hanukah are different. Yes, they both happen at the same time. Yes, they both have lights and presents. But...Read more...

THANKSGIVING SHABBAT
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

In 1620, our Pilgrim ancestors escaped the tyranny and religious persecution of the Old World and braved a treacherous journey, to find freedom on this continent. They landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. Settling at the edge of a vast wilderness, they nearly perished. They were rescued by generous natives who brought food and taught them to survive in this land. A year later,...Read more...

Choose Life
Rosh Hashana 5770, 2009
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

In the second century, the Roman Empire decreed that the practice of Judaism was a political affront to the Caesar. They prohibited every Jewish practice, and most especially the teaching of Torah. For Rabbi Akiba, Torah was life itself. So he continued to teach Torah in public, until he was arrested by the Roman authorities. They decided to make an example of him....Read more...

Chaye Sarah
Genesis 23:1 - 25:18
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Who was the first Jew? All of us learned in Sunday school that the first Jew was Abraham. It was our father Abraham who detected the presence of the one true God and championed monotheism in a pagan world. It was with Abraham that God established the Covenant, defining our identity, our mission, and our destiny. All that's true. But the first Jew wasn't Abraham. The...Read more...

Behar Sinai
Leviticus 25:1 - 26:2
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

"We don't know who discovered water," Einstein observed, but we do know one thing: "It wasn't a fish!" Why not a fish? Because a fish -- born into water, living, eating, breathing water -- is never sufficiently separated from water to become aware of its presence. The unnoticed condition of its existence, no fish will ever know water. And as for us, what surrounds and...Read more...

Behaalot'cha
Numbers 8- 12
Alligators Under The Bed
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

I learned most of my theology, not from my teachers, but from my children. When my daughter Nessa was three years old, we had a routine. Each night I would tuck her into bed, sing our bedtime prayers, kiss her good night, and attempt to sneak out of the room. Halfway down the hall, she began to scream: "Abba! There's an alligator under my bed!...Read more...

OD LO AVDA TIKVATEYNU--ISRAEL, ZIONISM & US
Rosh Hashana 1997, 5758 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

Once upon a time there was a people with no place in the world: No country that was home, no haven that was safe.

In the East, they were kept as convenient scapegoats to distract the peasantry from a harsh and corrupt regime, from endless starvation and want. Whipped into a frenzy by local preachers with cries of "Christ...Read more...

Answering Our Children & Their Questions
by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

"Where do babies come from?" we asked our parents ... and watched them panic. With beads of perspiration on the brow, and an air of reverent seriousness, they sat us down and explained the mysteries of human reproduction. No more. Parents and kids of the 90's discuss these matters with an almost casual open-ness -- de-mystified by TV and movies and school...Read more...

A Yom Kippur Carol
Yom Kippur 5770, 2009 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

It’s a day for confessions, so I want to confess that for a rabbi and a religious Jew, I enjoy Christmas entirely too much. Of course, I don’t celebrate the holiday, but I enjoy the lights and decorations and the spirit of that time of year. I sing Christmas songs, even though they all come out sounding like Hasidic melodies. And most of all, I cherish Charles...Read more...

A Covenant of Jewish Soul
Yom Kippur 2005 by Rabbi Edward Feinstein

There is a story that haunts me this time of year. 

It is the story of a young Jew who lived in Germany at the beginning of the century -- a brilliant student of philosophy at the University of Berlin. All of his cousins, and all his colleagues and acquaintances had converted to Christianity, as was so common among young Jews at the time. His...Read more...

It’s complicated.

If you’ve ever tried to explain being Jewish to an outsider, it’s complicated.

You’re sitting on an airplane, and the fellow sitting beside you sees you’re reading a Jewish book  and he asks you, Excuse me, but could I...Read more...