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...
The Origin of Ethics
The comments section on any social media is generally filled with vitriol, nastiness, and trolling. There is something about the distance created between the speaker and the listener that gives voice to some of the worst in the human soul. Warfare between nations has a similarly frightening component. Generals and political leaders may be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the targets of their violence. They order destruction and...Read more...
Waiting for Sinai
We are getting ready for revelation. We are waiting for meaning, for coherence. We crave a sense that what we are doing matters and is significant. Yet we can never know, so we keep waiting. We stand freed from Egypt. We crossed the Sea three weeks ago but we have no idea where we are going. The promise is a land, but we’ve never been there and don’t know what it will be like.
We’ve been counting each day. Noticing at the...Read more...
Remembrance and Celebration
In Israel, Israeli Independence Day is preceded by a day of memory. All those fallen in wars and acts of terror are memorialized. There is a service at Har Herzl in Jerusalem and a moment of silence throughout the country in which everything comes to a stop. Everyone in Israel knows someone who has died; everyone in Israel has a family member who has experienced a tragedy. Memorial Day here can feel more distant, but in Israel it is fresh,...Read more...
Phases of Redemption
Passover is the festival of redemption, celebrating God bringing us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Or rather, telling a story of redemption to remind all of us of our God-given capacity to find and enact redemption. Redemption has three levels and each Passover we have a unique opportunity to grow, to find a great quality of redemption in our lives.
First is freedom from slavery and political oppression....Read more...
Judicial Reform
The Judicial Revolution: A Guide
Israel is in the midst of a constitutional crisis around the role of the Supreme Court. Hundreds of thousands are taking to the streets in protest; the government is recklessly pushing forward a set of reforms dangerous to democracy. The President of Israel has warned of civil war. Fighter pilots have refused their reserve duty in protest. At the same time, 78% of Israelis support some judicial reform,...Read more...
A Guide for the Passover Perplexed
The State of Israel is the Mishkan, and we dare not lose it. Click here for Rabbi Booth’s talk about the political moment in Israel.
Passover is less than two weeks away. Now is the time to begin preparing our kitchens and our souls for the celebration of the holiday. I will focus this week on the physical preparations for the holiday, and next week on the spiritual.
At Passover, we are commanded to...Read more...
Zionism Today
I am a Zionist. For me, that means a strong belief in a Jewish and Democratic state. It means a firm conviction that the opportunity to build the Israel of our dreams is a mitzvah for every Jew whether in the Diaspora or in the State of Israel. We waited for 2000 years to have a land of our own, to have a chance to bring Jewish ethics and thought into the reality of a State. Now that we have it, the work and the dreaming only gets...Read more...
Feeling the Music 3/3/2023
There is something special about dancing in a circle. The Hasidic world sees dance as a way to feel something of God. By putting our arms around one another and by dancing and singing and clapping, we get carried away out of ourselves and are open to God. Yet, some look at that circle and wonder:are they crazy? Why are they dancing like that and what are they really feeling? I don’t even hear the music. According to the Baal Shem...Read more...
Liturgical Challenges
Question:
How do you experience Jewish prayer? Are you drawn into its words and hints and allusions, or do you find it hard to make meaning or sense of it?
A Sense of how I experience Jewish prayer
Jewish liturgy is a remarkable reworking and layering of Biblical verses. The Rabbis ask: why use words of silver when we have words of gold?” That is, why use the words of even the...Read more...
Engaging the Siddur - 02/17/2023
Finding our way into the prayer book is challenging. The language is layered and confusing, the translations occasionally abstruse, and the theology seemingly antiquated. Also, it has grown far too large over the years. It’s easy to add something, hard to remove it.
A quick example: I have a number of issues with Unatanetokef, the prayer in the Musaf Kedushah at Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. This prayer...Read more...
Brokenness and Wholeness - 02/10/2023
In my practical spirituality class, someone first described herself as neither religious nor spiritual. Then she shared an experience in which she finds herself connected with community and finds a sense of being beyond the self. She said that the songs at the end of Yom Kippur are especially meaningful to her.
This leads to a question. How can someone who loves a key element of the...Read more...
GOD
When I say I believe in God, I never know what people think that means. I am confident that God isn’t some human-like entity living in the sky watching over us. I also don’t think God determines every choice I make or is looking after me in a direct and personal way. I also don’t believe that God is a person, or even an entity in any way that we normally mean.
I also don’t mean that...Read more...
Finding Blessings
Exercise: I invite you this week to concentrate on blessing people in your life. I invite you to look at the people around you and imagine: what are the words they need to hear right now? How can I name something in them that will be strengthened and enlivened by its being noticed? Take note of someone you love, write down or think about the words they need. Then, perhaps, find the courage to offer them...Read more...
Heres Why Not Pray on the Temple Mount
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key coalition partner in the new Israeli government and the person in charge
of policing at the Temple mount, would like Jews to pray at that site. He is making a religious
freedom argument that feels compelling to us as Jews who believe in pluralism. Yet there are
dangerous halakhic, spiritual, and political problems in this apparent call for equity.
As a matter of Halakhah, Jews traditionally did...Read more...
Practical Spirituality
Jewish spirituality is broken. This manifests in several ways. It starts with theology. When we talk about
God, we lack a shared referent. We don’t mean some old guy up in the sky watching over us. We also
are Jews, so we know we don’t mean Jesus as a human manifestation of the Divine. (As an aside, the
Pew study shows that the one belief shared by Jews is that we aren’t Christian. This is a disaster for
Judaism because...Read more...
Impact Scholarship
Israel is a tale of two countries. The major cities – Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, even Beer-Sheva, thrive. They have been part of an economic miracle as Israel takes its place as a major hub of technology and innovation. Other cities, places like Sderot or Tiberius, have been left behind. Those cities experience more poverty, more drug use, and less education and opportunity. Yet no matter...Read more...
“Jacob encountered the place….”
“Jacob encountered the place….”
As Jacob flees Esau, the Bible relates that he “encountered” or, more literally, “struck” a place. The Midrash imagines the place is none other than the place of Isaac’s almost sacrifice. At the very moment of leaving, Jacob encounters the most profound of family dramas, the binding of his father, the man who taught him to think of God as “the fear of...Read more...
Welcoming the Stranger
Kol Emeth has been fortunate to be thriving the last few years. The pandemic, for all the damage it did, also reminded people how much they need Shabbat and a spiritual community. Further, our new building appeals in a new way that complements our amazing team and congregation. I want to share with you a few ideas that have been powering that growth.
First: Kol Emeth is a serious...Read more...
Yep, He Really Said That
In recent weeks, there have been several disturbing expressions of antisemitism. Two people spoke from unbelievable depths of ignorance. One of whom should have known better, and pretended he was “only joking.” In none of these cases have the people involved apologized in a meaningful way or...Read more...
Elections, Elections, Elections, Elections, Elections
I believe in democracy as a system. I don’t always like the results, and the nature of democracy is to careen around in sometimes frightening and worrisome ways. And though it consistently works badly, it's also consistently better than anything else.
I don’t like the outcome of the recent Israeli elections. I am concerned that Netanyahu’s continued involvement in Israeli political life has become...Read more...
CyberTorah: The Sukkah as a Gateway to noticing the good.
Criticism of others is hard wired into the human psyche. When something goes poorly, especially
something that matters to us, we react as though the difficulty or failing is a threat. This floods the body
with all kinds of hormones that narrow our cognition and focus us on the threat. While this made sense
your friend has just foolishly thrown away his spear, it limits our response to today’s challenges.
As a...Read more...
From Fear to Joy
Fear is important. Let’s be honest: being afraid motivates. I can move surprisingly fast when I think
someone I love is in trouble. I avoid walking in certain areas with large frightening dogs. There are times
with family and friends when I am afraid of hurting someone and I act out of worry and anxiety. Fear
matters and motivates.
Yet, fear is only a tool to recognize what matters to me. I am afraid of that...Read more...
May we enter Yom Kippur whole and take our leave from Yom Kippur whole
Yom Kippur is both the most hopeful and most difficult Jewish day of the year. On the one hand, it rings
out and is filled with hope because it asserts we can change. The whole idea of Teshuvah, of repentance,
is that we are not prisoners of our past, of the scripts that we and our parents and families have written
for us. We are capable of writing our own entries in the Book of Life. With introspection and prayer, we
are...Read more...
A Guide to Surviving Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Or – Seven Tips to a Meaning – Filled Days of Awe
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are overwhelming and liturgically dense. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the experience. Worse, since we do it every year, it’s easy to let it all pass over us and get bored. Here follow seven tips to having a meaningful, spiritual, experience during the Holidays.
Make the experience personal. Rosh Hashanah and Yom...Read more...
Writing Scripts of Hope
Writing Scripts of Hope
People often say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” or “God only sends us what we can handle.” I believe these related sentiments are almost entirely untrue. Certain challenges do strengthen us and teach us how to handle adversity. And I suppose by definition anything we survive we can handle. And yet, I believe losses and challenges wound us...Read more...
From Where Does Our Comfort Come?
CyberTorah: Clean Air
Please join me Tuesday morning at 10:30am for the Kol Emeth Institute for MeaningfuRead more...
