In the Exodus narrative we see God visit punishing judgments not only on Pharaoh as Egypt's governing leader - but also onto the entire Egyptian populace, Did God destroy and torment "innocent civilians." The Scriptures open up genuine understanding of this deeply challenging topic" are "civilians" always automatically "innocent?"
As we navigate varying seasons of ease or challenge in our lives or in our era, what is it about "faith" or "faithfulness" that allows us to retain a *healthy* (non-delusional or denial-based) positive inner state and momentum, no matter what circumstances may be swirling around us?
The end of Genesis and beginning of Exodus are valuable reading if it is truth we seek, not "life-hacks" guaranteeing a safe, easy, or profit-laden life. God's own project hits more bumps in the road and impacts with more human frailty and more evil than we could possibly have imagined: and this is God's own project! May He help us to gain understanding from the time when His promised "nation," after 3 generations, was still only 70 people in number, many of whom were highly dysfunctional people...
As we leaving 2023, this sermon given on 16 June 2021 seemed so appropriate a focus, it led us to choose that weekend's service for rebroadcast when we were prevented from meeting in person by a Covid-19 outbreak in our Staff. Thank God all are again testing "Negative (Covid-free)," so will be meeting again this Saturday 6 January in person. We hope if you are local, you will join us in person: and If not - "virtually" via our livestream on YouTube and Facebook channels. Shalom - and Happy New Y...
We could not meet this past weekend due to a Covid19 breakout in our staff - happily all are recovering nicely. We re-broadcast a sermon from earlier in the year that was not made into a Podcast: it followed a "Giyur" (Conversion) service in our synagogue in September. It is rich with meaning and applicability for now and the coming year before us. We pray you enjoy it! Shalom!
[GIven to Cape Town, South Africa via Zoom on 15 Dec 2023] In this week's Haftarah for "Mikketz," we see a king put on the spot to answer a question only modern genetic science could. He does. He is supernaturally given wisdom beyond human limits, In this post-Hamas Pogrom era of upscaled Jihad against The State of Israel and against Jews everywhere, it seems essential that a sense of justifiable hope for seemingly impossible solutions is needed, if it can be had. Let's study, and see it togethe...
This recording contains a preliminary statement propelling from the song "Ma'oz Tzur" traditionally sung for Hanukkah; and afterwards, the sermon "Show Them Yeshua" attempting to context the multi-dimensional Messiah into (hopefully) accurate and unsimplified form - especially during the very challenging season following the Hamas Pogrom still underway since 7 October. It closes with the singing of Maoz Tzur (Rock Of Ages) vocals by Janna, piano by Rabbi Bruce.
In this week's parasha, Jacob's life continues to seem to go from wrong to wronger. The wife he really wanted dies first, leaving him go on in a calling filled with danger and challenges after his heart has been cut out. We see Jacob rise here in the name he gave the son whose birth took away his beloved Rachel. The combination of reality and clarity-of-calling has great relevance for Two Testament Jews in the wake of the Hamas October Pogrom.
Jacob is the 2000-year "source code" for the antisemitic portrait of Jews as deceitful money grubbers. Starting with the common mistranslation of his name "Ya'acov" - (consequent, or pursuant) wrongly as, "Deceiver" – and moving to how allegedly "just plain folks" alleged Harry Truman figure Esau, is falsely ennobled at Jacob's expense --- we see in the text it was actually "thank God I'm a country boy" Esau who deceived by failure of candor, and attempted to theft by fraud when he sought to obt...
After an event like the Hamas Pogrom of 7 October - how do we find our way forward not falling into the two extremes of response: Unrelenting Engagement vs. Utter Avoidance? Today we explore where strength for the moment AND recovery from its impact and demands can be found: and how soundly to balance them.
"He that keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps" was true on the morning of 7 October 2023, when over a thousand armed murderers stormed into Israel and slaughtered 1400 Jews in one day ... in Israel. And Kidnapped over 200 more. And let 200,000 be displaced. God was awake, aware, and present ... and did nothing to prevent what happened. So ... now what are we, as "Believers" to believe, think, say, and do. It is the Holocaust set of questions ... all over again. Let's not turn away or invent ...
God saw the Hamas Massacre Jews in October 2023 coming - and did nothing to prevent it, nor even warn of its approach. How do God-followers go forward in faith and positive spirituality, knowing as Messiah taught us, "not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from Your Heavenly Father?" And what are we to not only believe or think ... but do, since as Scripture teaches, "faith without action is dead."
One week into The Hamas Pogrom in Israel - the mass slaughter of civilians by missile attack and ground-assault --- all aimed at civilians. Atrocities not seen since the Holocaust - happening on the Holidays of Shmeini Atzeret and Simchat Torah and Shabbat - on the 50th Anniversary of The Yom Kippur War. "God saw the light - that it was good; and separated between light and darkness." We are seeing the terrible difference between light and darkness, right when we are beginning again. It's what w...
Human understanding of reality changed in 1923 when our species did what Isaiah 51:6 suggests, and looked (in)to the heavens and looked at (the structure of) the earth ... and learned that ALL physical existence is only temporary. Temporary like the Sukkot we build each year: a house "not built to last" and that will one day cease to exist. We are we to do with this knowledge in contrast to the "eternity" of what God calls, "My Salvation/Rescue" ("Yeshua-ti") in the very same verse? How does kno...
For Yom Teruah (misnamed "Rosh Hashanah" in common use; the actual Biblical New Year is 1 Nisan (see Ex. 12:1ff) on the other side of the year.). The Day Of The Alarm/Trumpet-sound. We explore what it means to both be set free by the truth, and imprisoned by it, the way Galileo in the 1600s was both set free by his direct observation of the moons orbiting Jupiter (freeing him from the wrong world-view "everyone knew" - that everything did orbits the earth; and he was also taken captive by the tr...
T.S. Eliot said, "Most of the world's trouble comes from people trying to be or seem more important." This sermon on Haftarah Ki Tavo – the 1st Sermon of Beth El's 30th year - explores how to cease striving to be (or seem) more than we actually are - and get "comfortable in our own skin – strengths and limitations all-included. Kadima!
The parasha this week is "Shofteem" - "Judges (empowered expert legal authorities) and officers (enforcement/police) you will install in all your gates (where decisions are made)." Such personnel are only needed in places where crimes and harms are done. In "The Promised Land?" What gives, here? We find that banditry - using force and alliances to do self-beneficial harm to others by theft and other crimes – is at the heart of human existence. How can we rise above it?
On the Parasha "Re'eh" - and more so, on Jeremiah 26, this sermon explores the necessity of learning how, when situations turn upside down, to get them right-side up again; especially when some sort of "goodness" from God, expected by us because it was promised IN GENERAL by Him, does not make its way to us as individuals in real life, and our little boat capsizes. You can't sail if you can't handle your boat getting blown over - and also handle getting it "righted." Scripture gives us powerful ...
Piggy-backing off of last week's Torah, "you have been SHOWN to know" – this week focuses from the current parasha, "Ekev" on what we "know" as PROVEN propositions, AND what we have come to "know" by EXPERIENCE; and how we can use all these to neutralize fear when under pressure to make decisions having much at stake in them.
For Shabbat "Nachamu" ("comfort") after Tisha B'av ... the kind of comfort that comes from having been, as this week's Torah portion "V'Etchanen" describes –– "shown to know." The comfort of having seen clearly, so as to know clearly - and thus, be able to choose with certainty a forward path in conformity with truth.
In this week's passage giving Israel's gathered "leaders of tribes" moral-guidance directives about vow-keeping, the word for "tribe" is actually the word "mateh" for a "shepherds staff" - not "shevet" - the most common word for tribe, a "scepter" as a symbol of governmental authority. "Matot" reads oddly on the page. Why is this the word God's Spirit put into the pen of Moses at this moment? We explore exactly that this week: why.
All of Israel just stood and watched; but Pinchas acted; because he felt the same "zeal" God felt. What is the right kind of "zeal?" How do we acquire zeal that is healthy? People have zeal for many things, ranging from exalted pursuits like human rights to mere spending of time, in hobbies like video gaming, activity clubs, tv bing-viewing, etc. How do we rightly acquire and rightly use healthy zeal?
Invited to give the Erev Shabbat sermon via "Zoom" on 7 July for the weekly Torah portion, "Pinchas" – our Rabbi Bruce puts focus on the zeal of Pinchas directly affirmed by God, Himself; and asks, "How can we each develop healthy zeal for rightful things, causing us to use our time wisely rather than just 'spend' it, getting nothing of genuine value in line with God's will in return?"
This week's parasha shows the Israelites being slandered "because they are mighty." Why do people who are not mighty slander those who are? Messiah Yeshua - as his path was getting harder - taught His disciples how to have "fullness of joy" while facing such upticks in challenge. This excludes slander of those who outshine us, urging us in the Haftarah to walk "in modesty (accuracy and righteous relationship to one's self-image) with your God." It is a worthy lesson.
Criticism is often a placebo for genuine spirituality. The Letter of Ya'akov ("James") almost did not make it into The "New Testament" – because the redactors were concerned it places "too much" emphasis on ACTION rather than "faith & grace" (mere words and ideas). This sermon starts with the premise, "if you see a man drowning, do you CRITICIZE his poor swimming technique, or DO something (entailing EFFORT, or even RISK to yourself) to rescue him?"
Two Torah portions in a row - last week's Shalakh and this week's Korakh - Moses and God kept losing "the best people." Why? How did Moses and the remaining crew keep "enduring to the end, so as to be saved" in a calling repeatedly seeing "the best of the best" turn out to be not only useless - but toxic? From where and what came their "endurance" – and whatever "success" they had?
Numbers 13 holds forth for us how different people can view challenges through entirely different lenses. 10 said "No, we can't." And 2 said, "Yes, we can." Why? How? What can we, as pioneers of Two Testament Judaism, still in 1936 so-to-speak, developmentally, in the era of the "Tower And Wall Kibbutz," learn from it?
How healthy people made decisions to leave safety and comfort and go into lack and danger on frontiers in order to raise up things they believed to the core of their souls were so necessary, their "normal" and "comfy" lives among "their peeps" were acceptable risks or casualties.
On Shavuot, we recite the Torah-commanded trope, "My ancestor was a perishing Aremean." Yet – that description of his current state was not the final word on it. We see Ruth, a woman excluded from Israel by law – with her widowed and child-bereaved Jewish mother in law, Naomi, declaring "all hope for me is past." Yet – while these both seemed accurate at the moment, they was not close to the final word on either woman's existence. Let us truly learn Shavuot's lessons this year, in a way letting ...
Right use of our words in quantity and quality has been, in our present era, moved from the Biblical standards "where many words are, error is unavoidable" and "a harsh word stirs up anger," and "a slandering tongue hates the one it crushes" – into admiration of fast and hurtful speech, using humor to devastate others and using quantity to word-swamp rather than listen. Are values like, "Let your words be few" and "be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger" still valid in the present ...
