A Post-Election Reflection: Still Becoming American Jews

Posted by Matt Soffer
On November 15, 2016
1 Comments

As many of you know, the history of our congregation has been written beautifully by Susan Porter, Lisa Davis, and Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan, in their work entitled Becoming American Jews. It’s a book you can judge by its title. It tells our story; it reminds us that when we say “our story,” we are not talking […]

Posted by Matt Soffer
On March 16, 2016
1 Comments

Pekudei 5776: Finishing Exodus by Examining Our Practice of Giving (This blog was originally delivered as a sermon to the Riverway Project during Soul Food Friday on March 11, 2016) You know the feeling when you love a book so much that as the pages in your right hand get fewer and fewer, you begin getting […]

A Word on the Word, “Word”

Posted by Matt Soffer
On August 21, 2015
0 Comments

This past Tuesday Temple Israel went to the Holy Land of Fenway Park, 40 strong, for Jewish Heritage Night. As we gathered before walking together, I offered this quasi-irreverent D’var Torah, to complement our peanuts & cracker jacks: A D’var Torah is Hebrew for “a word” of Torah. Davar means “word.” So let’s take with us […]

Becoming “More Human” Knowing We Are “Only Human”

Posted by Matt Soffer
On August 14, 2015
1 Comments

In this week’s portion we encounter what is the Torah’s most unequivocal statement on economic justice. It reads, and I’ll excerpt the passage, for the sake of brevity: Efes ki lo yih’yeh b’cha evyon – There shall be absolutely no poor among you—since Adonai your God will bless you in the land that Adonai your […]

We Need Deuteronomy – Because Slavery is Not Over

Posted by Matt Soffer
On July 29, 2015
0 Comments

I just finished reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, an extraordinary work on the travesty of mass incarceration today in the US, particularly of African Americans. I haven’t yet recovered from what Alexander achieved in this work, essentially a telling of the facts, the reality, the truth about a state of injustice that I […]

Being Played, Playing Along, and Praying for Facts

Posted by Matt Soffer
On July 14, 2014
0 Comments

As I pray for a ceasefire to this conflict, looking back on how it flared up, I am haunted by the facts. I am haunted by the reality of Israel’s vulnerability, haunted by the prospect of a world without a Jewish State. I am haunted by the fact that Hamas continually launches missiles into Israel, targeting […]

Adult

Youth

A Post-Election Reflection: Still Becoming American Jews

Examining Our Practice of Giving

A Word on the Word, “Word”

Becoming “More Human” Knowing We Are “Only Human”

We Need Deuteronomy – Because Slavery is Not Over

Being Played, Playing Along, and Praying for Facts