I Came In

We have a custom around here that a Bar or Bat Mitzvah can ask me to give a sermon at their ceremony on a subject of their interest. Usually, this means that I have to read a young adult book or watch a current popular show. A recent Bat Mitzvah, Sadie Meltzer asked me to deal with one of the most serious subjects there is, dealing with bad things you have no control over.

The Benefit of Doubt

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were camping in the forest. They were lying beneath the night sky.

Holmes said, “Watson, good man, look up! What do you see?”

Why Is Hayyim a Collective/Plural Noun?

or Life Doesn't Have To Be Perfect To Be Wonderful - Yom Kippur 5777

I never married

Or - I got married but it didn’t work out

Or - I got married but we barely communicate

Circles of Responsibility or What We Think About at 2 am - Kol Nidre 5777

You get a call that your mother has fallen in her apartment in Brooklyn and has been taken to the emergency room. You live in Connecticut; you don’t want to drive into the city late at night because you’re completely unraveled, so you take a car service. There you are in the back seat of the car, and it’s 2 AM, and you’re worried about how you’re going to do in this situation. You’re wondering:

Thinking about Extinction - Rosh Hashana 5777

The famous science fiction novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card begins by recounting an alien invasion that came dangerously close to destroying Earth fifty years earlier. The military then determined that the only way to survive another alien attack was to actively seek out and train the best and the brightest children to be the military strategists and commanders of the future. A boy named Ender Wiggin is identified as Earth’s best hope.

The Trouble With Pirates - Rosh Hashana 5777

It took me a long time to get into reality TV, but now I like the shows where an expert comes in as a consultant and tries to fix what’s wrong with a business. I find that these shows usually are not about business, but people. The businesses are usually good ones but there are personality conflicts or people who don’t know their own strengths and weaknesses. Since I never drink and never go to bars, I thought it would be different to try a show called Bar Rescue. I saw a blurb for an episode about a bar in Silver Spring, Maryland, near where I grew up. The episode was called “Yo-ho-ho and a Bottle of Dumb.” That sounded like just about my speed.