From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Temple Emanuel in Newton
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Bringing weekly Jewish insights into your life. Join Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz, Rabbi Michelle Robinson and Rav-Hazzan Aliza Berger of Temple Emanuel in Newton, MA as they share modern ancient wisdom.

  1. FEB 7

    Shabbat Sermon: 30 Years to 'I am Jewish' with Guest Speaker Adrian Gonzalez

    Over the last 30 years, Adrian Gonzalez met and married his beloved, Leslie, joined Temple Emanuel, raised four wonderful children, and celebrated their bnei mitzvah right here on the Rabbi Samuel Chiel bimah. For all of this time, Adrian has been on his own spiritual journey. This year, he made the decision to officially join the Jewish people. Adrian shares his journey and about the love that brought him into the covenant. Adrian Gonzalez, the son of Cuban immigrants, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After earning a Materials Science Engineering degree from Cornell University, he began his career at Motorola in Tempe, Arizona, where he met his wife, Leslie. They later moved back East to be closer to family and settled in Newton, Massachusetts, where they have lived since 1996. Adrian and Leslie have four children and have been members of Temple Emanuel for nearly 25 years.   Today, Adrian is a trusted advisor and leading industry analyst with more than 26 years of supply chain research experience. He is president of Adelante SCM, which includes Talking Logistics (an online video talk show and blog) and Indago (a research community for supply chain and logistics executives). Adrian is also a LinkedIn Top Voice with nearly 250,000 followers.   Outside of work, Adrian is an avid cyclist, a fundraiser for Breakthrough T1D, and the author of a best-selling book yet to be written.

    17 min

  2. FEB 7

    Talmud Class: Is Anything as Strong as Inertia?

    Inertia is super strong. What, if anything, is stronger?   My late father-in-love used to say, “more than people know what they like, they like what they know.” People like what they know. They like certainty, clarity, predictability. They don’t like being rattled. They don’t like uncertainty. They don’t like unpredictability. They don’t like staring into a murky future.   The address in our sacred canon for the strength of inertia comes from last week’s reading. When the children of Israel left Egypt during the Exodus, the Torah says they left chamushim. Rashi offers two explanations for that word. One is that they left with arms, as they would need to fight wars on their way to the promised land. But the other explanation Rashi brings is that chamushim is related to the Hebrew word chamesh, five. Namely, only one in five Hebrew slaves chose to leave. Fully four out of five Hebrew slaves chose to remain slaves.   That Rashi is so evocative, so prescient, so rich. Fully 80 percent of Hebrew slaves chose the predictability of slavery over the insecurity of freedom. This despite their moaning and groaning under the burdens of slavery. This despite seeing God’s saving power with their own eyes—it’s dark for the Egyptians, not dark for us; the first-born of the Egyptians perish, our first-born are fine. Despite an interventionist God redeeming them from the misery of slavery, 80 percent of the Hebrew slaves opted for slavery. More than people know what they like, they like what they know. How often has this dynamic played out in Jewish history, with fatal consequences for those who opted to remain where they were.    Rashi goes on to add that the 80% died in Egypt. Throughout Jewish history, inertia has proven not only strong but deadly.   How does inertia show up in your life? How does inertia show up in our life? What, if anything, enables us to resist the incredible power of inertia? What can we learn from David Brooks’s final piece for the Times about how to resist inertia?   Would you have been the 20%? Or the 80%? Are you the 20% or the 80%?

    38 min

  3. JAN 31

    Shabbat Shira Sermon with Cantor Elias Rosemberg

    January 31, 2026

    12 min

  4. JAN 31

    Talmud Class: Baltimore or Israel? A New Wife/Grandmother's Dilemma

    Suzanne was happily married to her first husband, with whom she had two daughters, and four grandchildren. All lived happily in Baltimore. He died. At the age of 70, she was blessed to find love a second time with a man whom she married. Suzanne and her second husband went to Israel, and they loved it. She writes to Abigail Shrier, an advice columnist for The Free Press. Now age 74, Suzanne shares her dilemma:  I feel I am in my last act….I will soon be enfeebled to some degree, and not myself. Right now I’m still energetic, connected, engaged. I searched for what to do next, for fulfillment, to find meaning, to leave a mark. When my husband and I were last in Israel, it hit me. Took my breath away. I want to live in Jerusalem…But my conundrum: I have two daughters, and four grandchildren…between 6 and 12. They love me; I adore them. My daughters need me, and I need them. We don’t live far from one another and are together often. But I am never as alive as I am when I am in Israel, or as close to the meaning of my life….Should my last effort be to embed a lasting bond with my grandchildren, or should it be to be in the place that allows my soul to sing? Several questions to ponder: What does it mean to be a listening ear? If Suzanne had asked you, how would you understand your role?    What do you think on the merits? For Suzanne, for all of us, the clock is ticking. For Suzanne, for all of us, our time is limited. Alexander Hamilton wrote like he was running out of time. His sense of his own finitude inspired him to write 51 of the Federalist papers. How does the fact that we are all running out of time shape what we do with the time we have left?    Do you have your own version of Suzanne’s dilemma, loving two things, and not able to do both well at the same time? How do you resolve your dilemma?   What does Jewish wisdom teach us about how to think about this most human dilemma: since we are all running out of time, what do we do with the time we have left?   Abigail Shrier has a definite point of view! What do you think about what she says (the merits) and how she says it (her style)?

    37 min

  5. JAN 24

    Shabbat Sermon: Clarity, Courage, and Commitment: Confronting Antisemitism Now with Robert Leikind

    The surge of antisemitism has left many of us unsettled, confused, and struggling to understand what type of Jewish future is possible in the Diaspora. In fact, we can have a large hand in shaping our future, but to do this we first need to better understand the challenge before us. About Robert Leikind Rob Leikind has been director of AJC New England since 2008. A child of parents who survived Hitler’s Europe, he grew up with a deeply rooted regard for the opportunity that American democracy affords Jews and other vulnerable minorities. Throughout his career, Rob has been a passionate defender of civil rights, an ardent advocate in the fight against antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, and a vocal proponent of a just and secure future for Israel and its neighbors. Rob began his career working with Holocaust survivors in Brooklyn, New York. A lawyer by training, he served as an Assistant District Attorney before going on to be Director of the ADL’s Connecticut and Boston offices and Senior Vice President of Hebrew College. Rob has been a contributor to various media on topics ranging from Israel and anti-Semitism to intergroup relations and civil rights. He received his bachelor’s degree from Vassar College, an M.S. from Columbia University and his J.D. from the Boston College Law School.

    25 min

  6. JAN 24

    Talmud Class: Silver, Gold, and the Whirlwind

    What is the difference between the Exodus story we encounter in the spring in the Haggadah and the Exodus story we encounter in the winter in the Book of Exodus? One common answer is that Moses is hardly mentioned in the Haggadah and is obviously a major protagonist in the Torah’s telling. But there is another important difference.  The Torah has a lot to say about the Israelites taking silver and gold on their way out of Egypt.   The announcement before the 10th plague: “Tell the people to borrow, each man from his neighbor and each woman from hers, objects of silver and gold.” Exodus 11:2   The execution of the 10th plague: “The Israelites had done Moses’s bidding and borrowed from the Egyptians objects of silver and gold, and clothing. And the Lord had disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people, and they let them have their request; thus they stripped the Egyptians.” Exodus 12: 35-36   By contrast the Haggadah says nothing about the silver and gold.   Why does the Torah make such a tzimmus about the silver and gold? What is the Torah trying to teach us here?   Tomorrow morning we will consider traditional explanations that focus on reparations and a modern explanation that focuses on what Andy Stanley calls the whirlwind. The whirlwind is the daily intensity that keeps us from building the future we want to live in. Here God knows that the Israelites are going to need silver and gold to build the wilderness tabernacle, the mishkan. Even though the Israelites were dealing with the urgent business of getting out of Egypt, God has them plan ahead and gather the resources they will need for their tabernacle. Can we do that? Can we transcend the to do lists of today to work on the promise of tomorrow?

    44 min

  7. JAN 17

    Shabbat Sermon: Walking in the Light of God with Rabbi Aliza Berger

    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was courageous beyond measure. He walked with clarity and conviction in the face of menacing dogs, water cannons, angry mobs, and violent police and never seemed afraid.  What gave him this courage? In this sermon, we will hear his own testimony from his book Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story, as Dr. King shares what enabled him to move from paralyzing fear to courageous action. Can we learn to do that? Can we do our own version of what he did?

    12 min

  8. JAN 17

    Talmud Class: The Best Thing to Do with Secrets, Skeletons, and Shame

    What would you think about a nephew marrying his aunt—his mother or father’s sister—and starting a family together? It feels creepy, gross, incestuous. In fact, the Torah not once but twice bans nephew-aunt unions. Do not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is your father’s flesh. Leviticus 18:12 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister or of your father’s sister, for that is laying bare one’s own flesh; they shall bear their guilt. Leviticus 20:19 Why am I telling you this? What am I leading with this unsavory subject? Because in this week’s portion, the Torah abruptly slams the breaks on the telling of the Exodus story—Moses’s initial demand to Pharaoh to let my people go, Pharaoh’s rejection and demand that the Israelites make the same tally of bricks but gather their own straw, God’s reaffirmation that God has heard their cry and will redeem them, and then the first seven of the ten plagues—the Torah slams the breaks on all this suspense before the plagues begin, to offer a genealogy. Genealogies are eye-glazing. One tends to pass over it to get back to the drama. That would be a mistake. This genealogy contains a bombshell: Amram took to wife his father’s sister Jochebed, and she bore him Aaron and Moses…It is the same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring forth the Israelites from the land of Egypt, troop by troop.” It was they who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt to free the Israelites from the Egyptians; these are the same Moses and Aaron. Exodus 6:20 and 26-27. Turns out, the dry genealogy is not so dry. It makes two points. One, Aaron and Moses are the fruit of a nephew-aunt union that we know to be creepy and incestuous, and that the Torah itself twice prohibits. Two, it is precisely and defiantly this Aaron and Moses that lead the Israelites out of Egypt. What is Exodus 6 trying to teach us?

    28 min
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

Bringing weekly Jewish insights into your life. Join Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz, Rabbi Michelle Robinson and Rav-Hazzan Aliza Berger of Temple Emanuel in Newton, MA as they share modern ancient wisdom.

Information

  • Creator
    Temple Emanuel in Newton
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    558
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Temple Emanuel in Newton

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