Welcome to CyberTorah
Torah Commentary by Rabbi David Booth
CyberTorah is a weekly commentary by Rabbi David Booth, spiritual leader of Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto, California.
Rabbi Booth was educated at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and...Read more...
Pluralistic Communities
After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I listened to sermons from my friends and some of the most respected colleagues around the country. I heard stirring messages that shared themes of trauma and a need to double down on hope. We are all feeling heart broken and searching for ways to heal. Yet I noticed something else.
Most of those sermons fell into one of two categories. There were the defenders of Israel, the people who...Read more...
To everything there is a season
When Israel celebrates their independence, they have a two part ritual. First comes Yom HaZikaron, Israeli memorial day. People mourn their loved ones; there are beautiful ceremonies at cemeteries around the country. There is a moment of silence when everything stops as people remember those who gave their lives in defense of the country. After that day of solemnity and mourning, as the sun sets, grief gives way to joy. People dance and party...Read more...
Joy
Joy is in short supply. Between our domestic and Israeli concerns, there is little space left for simchah or joy. And yet I want to suggest that it is in precisely such a moment that we need to create space for joy, to find room for something that can allow us to feel more whole. I want to share two teachings in that vein.
First, Rebbe Nachman teaches that it is essential to remain joyous. His followers turned that into a subversive...Read more...
Return
In Western literature, returning home looms large. Return means to come back transformed by one’s adventures with new heroic capacities. When Odyseus or Frodo come back, they have grown and are now more than able to manage the challenges at home that before would have overwhelmed them. The growth is in heroic capacity, the return to a place that is static or that the hero, in returning, can restore to its former glory.
For the...Read more...
Hope
Rabbi Akiva was the most intense of the Rabbis. It is Rabbi Akiva who argued for including the Song of Songs into the Bible. He saw the erotic as a part of the spiritual encounter. Similarly, he was a political radical. He was most likely the spiritual leader behind Bar Kokhba, who led an ill-fated revolt against the Romans. Though the revolt threw off the Roman yoke for 3 years, it ultimately collapsed and left devastation in its...Read more...
Be Careful What You Pray For
Imagine a couple without children. They have traveled from place to place for work, looking for their own promised land. As much as they love each other, and they really do, they also yearn deeply and completely for a child of their own. At one point they were able to have a child with a surrogate (but only with the husband’s genetic material), but they continue to hope for a child together, where they can both be the biological...Read more...
My Bar Mitzvah
41 years ago, I got called to the Torah for the first time. I have some vivid memories. I remember my Dad smiling at me with tremendous joy. I remember going way too fast on the Kaddish Shalem and the Rabbi stopping me and making me start over. I remember a beautiful and slightly awkward party at my home. Awkward, because I was a socially unskilled 13 year old without anything resembling the skills to be at a mixed gender...Read more...
Shiva: Poems of October 7th
One of my teachers in Rabbinical school used to say that there are two types of bestsellers. One sells 100,000 copies in a single year, the other 1,000 copies for 100 years. Shiva: Poems of October 7th is in the second category, though I hope it will sell far more than 1000 copies this year.
Rachel Korazim, a scholar of Israeli poetry, has made the teaching of Israeli poetry to American Jewish audiences her life’s passion. She...Read more...
Busying with Torah
Before study, there is a custom of saying the following blessing: Praised are You, God, ruler of all, who makes us holy in Your commandments and commands us to busy ourselves with Torah. On a surface level, the blessing suggests Torah as a kind of hiding place. When the stresses of the world get to be too much, thank You for this other place to occupy our mind. In the midst of darkness and...Read more...
Bless This Year
To this point in our exploration of the Amidah, I have suggested meditations to awaken a connection with each of the 19 blessings of the weekday Amidah. I believe daily prayer that allows us to express our deepest feelings, fears, and hopes is essential to whole living. For me, taking time each day to orient myself towards my deepest values and self makes me a better person. I feel obligated to pray...Read more...
Healing
Exercise 1, the self: Focus on an area of your body that is experiencing pain or illness. Imagine that area being filled with God’s love, an energy that pushes away and heals that which is injured. Envision that loving energy enveloping the illness or pain, and gradually easing it away, back towards health. Then say, Praised are You, God, who heals Your people Israel, Barukh Atah Adonai, HaRophei...Read more...
Let All Who Are Hungry Come And Eat
Last Thursday I had a young adult gathering in which I asked them why they joined Kol Emeth. To a person, they responded that when they came to Kol Emeth, they immediately felt welcomed, known and seen. A Rabbi came to greet them; multiple people from the community made a point of saying hello and getting to know them. As they got to know the community, they realized this was the place for them....Read more...
Passover
As Passover approached, I wanted to share two readings with you as possible inserts for your Seder. I pray that you have a joyous and hopeful Passover. May God grant us the light in our eyes to pierce the darkness and see forward to hope.
First, something I wrote about the four children:
Today, there are four children. First are the defenders of the Jewish...Read more...
Amidah Exercise and Commentaries Part 7
And God heard their cry and remembered the covenant...(Exodus 2:24).
Exercise 1: get in touch with a place of pain or restriction in your heart. Perhaps it is a story or experience that you have never fully worked through. Or maybe it is a current area of pain. Or it could be someone at work or home who is abusive to you. Perhaps it is pain or loss of function in your body.
As you...Read more...
A Guide for the Passover Perplexed
As Passover draws near, it is time to get our homes and kitchens ready for this special Holiday. This guide offers an overview of home preparation. For more details, go here.
Spiritual Meaning
Passover is...Read more...
Forgiveness
Exercise #1, General: Imagine that you are encountering a power so filled with love, waiting only to be asked for forgiveness. Own your imperfections; face openly your failings and the ways you have hurt others and yourself.
Say: Forgive me, God, for I have sinned. Forgive me, not because I deserve it, but...Read more...
Prayer for Israel
I say the Prayer for Israel for three key reasons. First, I pray for Israel and its people. I want Israel to be safe and secure, a place that thrives with wealth, security and freedom for all its inhabitants. This prayer has a political dimension because it is in politics that our values get expressed in the real world. Yet unlike political lobbying, prayer is a desire to manifest in the world a true hope. We name something pure and holy and...Read more...
Turn Us Back
Exercise: Take a long cleansing breath. Notice the deepest part of the self, the place from which our intentions arise. Notice its clarity, its wholeness. Imagine that you possess a life point of perfect purity and awareness, a place as it were connected to the Divine. Note the way that fears, insecurities, and separation cloud and interfere with your connection to that sacred hidden inner place.
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Discernment
Practice: After entering into prayer as described in the previous emails, take a moment of awareness about awareness. Take three long breaths. Notice the gift of thought and discernment. Feel gratitude for your intelligence, that you can learn and take in new information. Take another breath. Appreciate the ability to be compassionate, that we can notice and understand with empathy the feelings of...Read more...
Holiness
Exercise: Take three deep breaths. Invite either through the traditional language or your own imagination connection to our ancestors, our family that is and that will be. Connect also with God’s power to heal, to support us, and to invite us to confront our own limited selves.
Take another breath. Now is the prayer of noticing God’s holiness....Read more...
Facing Death
Exercise: In providing practices for each section of the Amidah, there is a risk that the practice will become too extensive. Feel free to spend more or less time on each exercise as they stack up.
Begin as before. Take a few long breaths. Engage with last week’s exercise about generations and human connection, either through the words of the liturgy or your own meditation. End with the blessing, barukh atah adaoni, magan Avraham...Read more...
Standing Before God
Activity: Stand up. Take a deep breath. Take three steps backward and three steps forward. Imagine that you are entering a sacred space of immense power, calm, and compassion. Perhaps you are accompanied by parents, mentors, grandparents. All sharing a moment of connection with each other, with the Divine, with all that is.
Now, pick one of two paths. Either say the words of the first paragraph of the Amidah linked here in either...Read more...
Weekday Prayer: A Human Necessity
Rabbi Graff and I have realized that we have emphasized Shabbat prayer but far less daily prayer. This makes sense, given the amazing Shabbat community that gathers every week at Kol Emeth. This has left a gap, because Shabbat prayers, and especially the Amidah (the silent prayer), focus on gratitude and dwelling with the Divine. The idea is Shabbat is a day of rest where we leave behind our hopes, strivings, and...Read more...
After Thirty Days
Abraham goes to bury Sarah. He has seemingly been caught unaware, with no plans. He lacks even a gravesite for her and has to go to the people of the land, the Canaanites, to buy a place. His life partner, the woman with whom he changed the world, is no more. She had been such a large part of his life that even though neither of them are young he could not imagine a world without her in it. She had been healthy and well. He sits and mourns...Read more...
Achva B'Kerem
We are all looking for ways to help Israel right now. Kol Emeth has a dear friend who lives in Jerusalem, Rabbi Tamir Nir who leads Achva B’Kerem, a pluralistic Synagogue in Jerusalem. We met Tamir during the pandemic as part of our virtual tour of Israel and in person this past December. He is an amazing Rabbi who has created a pluralistic community dedicated to meaningful, soulful, Judaism.
Since October 7th, Tamir and his...Read more...
Innocent Lives
Will the Judge of all the Earth act unjustly? So Abraham challenges God. God sees the horrific behavior of Sodom and Gomorrah and decides to act. What is it that God has seen? According to the Talmud, God saw a wanton disregard for ethics and human life. The inhabitants of these cities twist and pervert justice so that workers are injured as part of their jobs, visitors are abused and even mutilated. Finally, God hears the call of one woman...Read more...
A Few Reflections
I had intended to send this right after the holidays. The crisis in Israel required a different kind of CyberTorah. However, I still feel there is a place for gratitude and appreciation. So, here is my thank you to this amazing community.
As the holidays conclude, I am filled with gratitude for the Kol Emeth community. Here are a few areas that have moved and inspired me.
Quality of Welcome. This is a time of year when new...Read more...
If You Will It, It Is No Dream
There is an odd passage in the Passover Haggadah in which we learn of Rabbi Akiva and others telling and retelling the Exodus from Egypt until the dawn breaks. Their students then come and tell them it is time to say the Sh’ma for daybreak, at which point they conclude their Seder. What does it mean that they stayed up all night?
I believe the night symbolizes the darkness of Exile. Exile is the time of the imperfect world, the...Read more...
Kishinev and Hamas
In 1903, the Jewish community of Kishinev was decimated at the hands of Russians and Ukrainians. Dozens were murdered and raped and over 1500 homes were destroyed. There had been earlier pogroms, yet this one captured international attention. Partly, wire services and new information technology meant this was a very early tragedy to receive international coverage. And also, it seemed as though modernity with all its advances should have...Read more...
Simchat Torah Memories
Simchat Torah is the day when Jews around the world conclude the cycle of reading the Torah and begin again with the book of Genesis. We dance, we sing, and we celebrate. Here are a few memories of previous Simchat Torah celebrations:
1. My first REAL Simchat Torah was in Israel. Carol and I were living in Jerusalem while I was in Rabbinical school. We went to a modern Orthodox Synagogue called Yedidya. At that time, Yedidya was the...Read more...
