Rabbi Sherman - Honorable Mensch-ion

Dayeinu! I wish I could wait until Passover to say these words. Yet again, we wake up to a mass shooting. For us in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh felt spiritually close. Yet, today, in Los Angeles, Thousand Oaks was physically close....

The sociologist Erich Fromm taught, “We all have an overpowering urge to leave our mark on the world and to change it.” The Torah tells us, shenei chayei Sarah, these are the years of our mother, Sarah. Sarah lived 120...

As I landed in Philadelphia this past week, on vacation with my children, the pilot joyfully announced, “Welcome to the city of the birthplace of freedom.” Yesterday morning, my parents drove us past Independence Hall, the place where the United...

Sinai Temple was fortunate to host the Maccabi Haifa basketball team this week, as they prepared to take on the Los Angeles Clippers. After a clinic with Sinai Temple students, I had the opportunity to interview the head coach, Barak...

A school principal stood in front of the parents at the start of the year and said, “Much have I learned from my masters, even more from my colleagues, umiltalmidai yoter mikulam, and from my students more than from all.”...

A pious man had the custom of putting coins in a few different tzedakah boxes before Shabbat each week. He would then pray. For the orphanage, “May God grant that my children and grandchildren never have to be placed there.”...

Rabbi Guzik and I asked our son this week, “What do you do on Yom Kippur?” He answered, “You build a sukkah.” While he may have been a few days ahead of the rest of the Jewish world, I also...

There was a man who was a habitual sinner. There was no sin in the world he had not committed. One day, his conscience tormented him and he decided to repent for his sins. He went to the local Rabbi...

Jack once asked his friend Sam, “Why don’t you wear a watch?” Jack asnwered that he does not need one, because he can always ask someone else the time. “But what do you do if you get up during the...

Ten years ago, I delivered my senior sermon at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America on parshat Ki Tavo. At the end of a series of blessings and curses, the Torah teaches us that we should “walk in God’s ways.”...