Gut yontev.

            As much as I relish baby-namings, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, and other happy life cycle events, it’s the funerals where I pour out my heart and soul.  I feel if a person has been busy living a life, the least I can do is elevate that life as a way of giving comfort to the mourners, and...Read more...

Rosh Hashana 5786 Day Two
Temple Beth El Newark, DE
Abraham’s Faithfulness and the Cost to Isaac
They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an alter there; he laid out the wood;
V’ya’akod et-Yitzhak b’no.
He bound his son Isaac, he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: “Abraham!...Read more...

It’s A Small World After All:
Cosmology of Ancient Peru, the Torah and Today
A sermon on facing fear and the comfort of knowing we are all facing fear … together .
Ozi (breathe) v’zimrat yah (breathe) ve-yehi (breathe) yeshuah (2x)
God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
-Psalm 118:14
High atop the Peruvian Andes … I thought I would never see any of you EVER again. I was part of a hiking...Read more...

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Rabbi Michael Beals October 11, 2024
Temple Beth El Newark, DE
KOL NIDREI: HOW TO GO ABOUT BEING A GOOD PERSON
Gut Yontev.
In a traditional synagogue service, the confession, or viddui, prayers are repeated TEN times, twice during each of the five services of Yom Kippur, beginning tonight with Kol Nidrei. And within those ten confessional texts, we have the short confession, beginning with the word Ashamnu, meaning “we...Read more...

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Rabbi Michael Beals October 2, 2024
Temple Beth El Newark, DE
Rosh Hashana Day 1 5755
DISCOVERING THE BACK STORY
Gut yontev.
Everyone has a back story. Understanding that back story helps us put their comments, behaviors … even their political affiliation into context. It may not help us agree with their choices, but if we understand someone’s back story we might react, or not react, differently. And at its...Read more...