High Holy Days

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A Sermon for Yom Kippur 2020

For months and months, I’ve been excitedly considering what I should talk about in my first High Holy Day sermon at my new congregation. ...

Following Channah's Example: A Prayer for Rosh Hashanah

The Haftarah portion for Rosh Hashanah comes from the first two chapters of 1 Samuel, and it tells the story of two, very unhappy women. ...

Yom Kippur 2019 / 5780

A couple years ago, while I was visiting my family in Memphis, I spent an afternoon doing what everyone does on vacation… digitizing old ...

Kol Nidre 2019 / 5780

I was taught, and I believe, that the Torah is not the history of the world but is instead the Jewish people’s way of telling our own sto...

Rosh Hashanah 5780

Narratives that coalesce around a single person who is the only one who can perform a critical task are ever present and ever popular. I ...

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5780

Figuring out what I wanted to speak about tonight was a very lengthy and difficult process. I started and abandoned several sermons until...

A Yom Kippur Sermon

When the first and second Temples still stood in Jerusalem, Yom Kippur looked significantly different than it does today. The ancient v...

Kol Nidre 2018

Over the summer, I received a message from Rabbi Paul Kipnes, who serves a congregation in California. In addition to his pulpit work, R...

A Rosh Hashanah Sermon

In tractate Sanhedrin 17b of the Babylonian Talmud, we read: A Torah scholar is not allowed to live in a city that does not have these 10...

An Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon

One of the most powerful and important motifs that we find in the High Holy Day prayer book is the idea of the Book of Life. On Rosh Has...

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Rabbi Rachel Bearman

"True service to God is service to one

another." - Lily Montagu