Found In Translation: Weekly Divrei Torah and Sermons from the BJ Rabbis and Guest Teachers

What makes suffering bearable when we cannot make it disappear? In his D’var Torah on Parashat Vayera, Senior Rabbinic Fellow Joe Blumberg reads the stories of Lot’s wife and Hagar as two very different experiences of pain. One suffers alone and becomes consumed by her grief. The other is met by a presence that sees her without judgment and helps her find a way forward. Joe reflects on the sacred work of simply staying beside one another in moments when there are no easy answers.

What do we do when the world fails to live up to our deepest moral hopes? In his Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah on Parashat Vayera, Rabbi Alex Braver returns to Avraham standing before the ruins of Sodom after his argument with God has failed. The rabbis see this moment as the beginning of Jewish prayer. Alex suggests that tefillah can be a way of standing in the gap between the world as we believe it should be and the broken world we actually encounter, while still remaining curious, engaged, and open to hope.

What if Avram was already on his way before God ever said, “Lekh Lekha”? In her kavannah on Parashat Lekh Lekha, Rabbi Felicia Sol explores a Hasidic teaching that distinguishes Avram not because he alone experienced a spiritual awakening, but because he kept walking when others stopped. She asks what keeps us from pursuing the visions we once believed in, and what it might take to keep moving toward a promised land even when fear or disappointment make it easier to settle where we are.

How do we hold onto our values when the world refuses to give us simple choices?

In Parashat Lekh Lekha, Rabbi Alex Braver turns to an Avram who is not defined by certainty, but by the challenge of navigating a morally complicated world. Connecting that struggle to the detention of Jews accompanying Palestinian olive growers in the West Bank, including Rabbi Aaron Leven, a BJ Rabbinic Fellowship alumnus, Alex asks how we stay grounded when our loyalties are strained and the path forward feels unclear.

The parashah offers a deeply human Avram, forced to make difficult choices without the comfort of perfect clarity.

What happens when we value the project more than the person? In her Kabbalat Shabbat kavannah on Parashat Noah, Rabbi Becca Weintraub turns to a midrash on the Tower of Babel in which people mourn a fallen brick more than a fallen worker. The story becomes a reminder of a fundamental truth we need again and again. No ideology, ambition, or accomplishment is more important than human life. Shabbat calls us back to that truth and to the sacred worth of every person.

In her D’var Torah on Parashat Noah, Rabbi Felicia Sol examines midrashic and rabbinic texts on the ark to explore what it means to build refuge, enter it, and eventually leave it. She reflects on Shabbat, Torah, and spiritual community as structures that can sustain us through difficult times, while reminding us that we cannot remain inside the ark forever. The purpose of refuge is not only to preserve life, but to prepare us to return to the world and take responsibility for what comes next.

What do we lose when knowledge becomes instant? In her D’var Torah on Parashat Bereshit, BJ Rabbinic Fellow Iliana Brodsky draws a connection between the tree of knowledge and the promise of artificial intelligence. Torah, she suggests, offers a different vision of how human beings are meant to learn. We acquire knowledge through experience, effort, uncertainty, and trying again. The goal is not simply to know more or arrive at the right answer faster, but to remain engaged in the process of being human.

What can a fragile sukkah teach us about what it means to feel held? On the first day of Sukkot, Rabbi Alex Braver contrasts the Torah’s image of the all-encompassing clouds of glory with the vulnerability of the sukkah itself. Precisely because our shelter is never perfect, he suggests, what we create and offer one another becomes all the more precious.

After Yom Kippur, how do we begin living the life we said we want to live? On the second day of Sukkot, Rabbi Becca Weintraub reflects on the physical mitzvot of the holiday (building the sukkah, holding the lulav and etrog, and immersing ourselves in ritual) and asks what practice we might carry with us once the hag is over.

What does it actually mean to do teshuvah? On Shabbat Shuvah, Rabbis Felicia Sol, Alex Braver, and Becca Weintraub together discuss the many ways Jewish tradition imagines the work of return. They remind us that there is no single path into teshuvah and invite us to discover which doorway might help us enter the work this year.

As the gates of Yom Kippur begin to close, how do we turn infinite possibility into choices about how we will actually live?

In his Ne’ilah sermon, Rabbi Alex Braver explores what courage looks like in a moment of profound uncertainty. Drawing on the Torah’s command to “choose life,” a rabbinic parable about paths that wind through thickets and clear ground, and the Israelites’ fear while waiting for Moses at Sinai, he challenges the idea that courage always means choosing quickly and decisively.

Sometimes the braver act is to resist panic, make room for uncertainty, and hold one another through the discomfort of not knowing what comes next. Teshuvah asks us to believe that other choices remain possible and to cultivate the inner strength to recognize them.

As the gates close, Alex calls us toward a quieter, harder kind of courage: the courage to remain open, stay in relationship, and preserve the possibility that something new can still emerge.

Yom Kippur confronts us with mortality so that we might learn how to live.

In her Ne’ilah sermon, Rabbi Felicia Sol reflects on Yom Kippur as a rehearsal for death and on the urgency and clarity that can emerge when we remember that our time is limited. Drawing on Jewish teachings about revelation, multiplicity, and a “heart of many rooms,” she invites us to resist a world organized around certainty and purity tests and instead cultivate hearts spacious enough for disagreement, questions, complexity, and truths larger than any one of us can hold.

And yet, for all the possibilities before us, there is one thing we do not have infinitely: one life.

As the gates close, Felicia calls us to cross a gesher L’hayim, a bridge to truly living with dignity, justice, peace, moral grandeur, spiritual audacity, love, connection, and pride in who we are.

In her annual Yom Kippur letter to her children, Rabbi Becca Weintraub reflects on the creativity children bring to figuring things out and what that can teach us about Judaism.

Also retelling the story of Rabbi Yishmael entering the Holy of Holies and unexpectedly being asked to bless God, Becca explores what happens when the carefully prescribed way of doing something gives way to an encounter no one could have prepared for. Yishmael must respond in his own way, drawing on a blessing that only he can give.

Becca shares that there is no single way to practice Judaism, connect with God, or bring our gifts into the world. Her blessing for her children and for all of us is to hold onto the imagination to say “but maybe,” discover new possibilities when we feel stuck, and remember that each of us has blessings that only we can offer.

What might become possible if we loosen our need to be certain?

In his Yom Kippur morning sermon, Rabbi Alex Braver begins with the ancient ritual of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, and an oath intended to ensure that every detail of the holiest service of the year would be performed exactly right.

In a moment filled with purity tests, loyalty oaths, and demands for certainty, he asks whether doubt might instead open us to encounters that surprise us, transform us, and even bring blessing.

On Yom Kippur, perhaps teshuvah begins by putting down some of what we think we know and listening for what might emerge.

What if doubt is not the opposite of faith, but the opening through which transformation becomes possible?

In her Yom Kippur morning sermon, Rabbi Felicia Sol explores two radically different rabbinic visions of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies. In one, a system built around precision and certainty leaves the High Priest and the elders suspicious of one another and weeping alone. In another, Rabbi Yishmael encounters an unexpected God who calls him by name and asks him for a blessing.

Felicia suggests that doubt can create the spaciousness to imagine God, ourselves, and one another differently. A question creates a “maybe.” A maybe creates possibility. And possibility makes room for change.

Teshuvah begins in that opening between what is and what could be.

In her Kol Nidre sermon, Rabbi Becca Weintraub begins with the exhausting calculations many Jews make about when it feels safe to reveal who we are—and asks what becomes possible when, for these 25 hours, we no longer have to hide.

Through the names Ivrim, B’nai Yisrael, and Yehudim, Becca explores the multiplicity built into Jewish identity itself. An Ivri can stand apart, cross into new territory, and carry hope for what has not yet come into being. Yisrael holds questioning alongside faith. Yehudi joins gratitude with responsibility for ourselves and one another.

Yom Kippur does not ask us to become one thing, she teaches. It asks us to become honest: to uncover ourselves, make room for all that we are, and step into the year ahead whole.

On Kol Nidre, Rabbi Felicia Sol reflected on what happens when fear, shame, polarization, and communal litmus tests pressure us to hide or to reduce Jewish identity to a single story.

Drawing on three ancient names for the Jewish people (Ivri, Yisrael, and Yehudi) Felicia explores the fullness of our inheritance. We are boundary-crossers willing to stand against the tide. We are wrestlers who refuse easy answers and strive toward what is upright. And we are a people called to gratitude, truth, responsibility, and repair.

At a moment when so much is projected onto Jews from the outside and so much is contested within our own community, Yom Kippur asks us to stop hiding and remember who we are, alive in all our complexity, struggle, responsibility, beauty, and possibility.

On Rosh Hashanah, the rabbinic birthday of humanity, Rabbi Felicia Sol asks a question that feels especially urgent: Can we still have faith in the human project?

Drawing on 2,000 years of teachings about the creation of humanity, Felicia explores what it means to contain both heaven and earth, extraordinary goodness and profound contradiction. In a polarized world that continually reduces people to ideologies, identities, and worst moments, she suggests that the opposite of dehumanization may be curiosity, the willingness to believe that another person contains more than we can see.

Our tradition does not ask us to have naive faith that human beings are always good. It asks something harder: to believe that we are capable of change. What will we do with the extraordinary, complicated, sacred gift of being human?

What does it mean to be an American Jew at a moment when our deepest commitments can seem to pull us in opposing directions?

Beginning with BJ’s founding in 1825, Rabbi Felicia Sol traces the intertwined histories of American democracy and American Judaism and the freedoms that allowed Jewish life here to become diverse, creative, and chosen from love. She then turns to the challenges of the present: rising antisemitism, threats to democracy, debates over free speech, Israel, and a polarized culture that continually demands we “pick a side.”

Felicia offers another model: covenantal belonging. Belonging does not require agreement, and disappointment does not release us from responsibility. America is unfinished. Jewish life is unfinished. Our task is not to walk away when either falls short, but to remain in relationship, demand more, repair what is broken, and continue to build.

On Erev Rosh Hashanah, 25 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Rabbi Felicia Sol remembers the nearly 3,000 lives lost and reflects on BJ’s experience of that devastating day and its aftermath.

From trying to reach members and loved ones to gathering for interfaith prayer and supporting first responders, Felicia recalls a city and community forever marked by those 102 minutes, inviting us to hold in memory all those whose lives were taken or irrevocably changed.

Zikhronam livrakha. May their memory be for a blessing.