I have a whole file folder on my computer with various drashot I’ve given. Most of the time they have a VERY descriptive file name so that I can go back and find it if I ever want to — the parsha, the location I gave it, the date, the…

Here we are again. Distanced. Masked. Not where we thought we’d be. Here I am again, giving what feels like yet another one of far too many drashot that talk about COVID and the world we are living in. It’s the circle of life…. Don’t worry, I won’t actually be…

Tonight we mark the beginning of the Jewish month of Kislev — the month that will bring Chanukah and all it’s delights, and the end of the month of Mar Cheshvan. If you walk out tonight, particularly in LA it seems, but anywhere you go actually, you won’t see a…

On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about brokenness and radical hope. We know our world is broken and yet we show up with these beautiful, perfect round challot symbolizing wholeness and the circle of life and we try again anyway. I knew then, both as a general concept and in specificity…

I don’t always share completed drashot that I write for school or otherwise, but this one feels different. Our professor, Rabbi Elianna Yolkut, has told us that the drash we give is the drash we need to hear — and in this case I am pretty confident that she was…

Over and over this line goes through my head. Yes, it could have been worse. But oh could it have been better. Even as someone who rarely gets invited to weddings, I was invited to 2 this year that should have been in person. There should have been trips and…

Hand grated latkes from scratch are a labor of love. You don’t make scratch latkes for a stranger (generally). There’s the hand grating on a box grater, the “juicing,” the seasoning, the mixing, the frying, the cooling, etc. But latkes are also meant to be eaten fresh. Stolen off a…

Eilu M’tziot — these are lost things. This begins chapter 2 of Mishna Bava Metzia, and is the piece of Talmud that we’ve been studying this semester. It begins by listing all sorts of lost things, and if the finder is allowed to keep them. It talks about scattered coins…

“No you recognized the old habit, that is the first step to renewal” Tonight marks one week since Yom Kippur. One full week since we stood at the precipice of death, looked around and said “mmm…maybe not,” confessed our communal sins, and came back from the edge into the time…