Rabbi Levinsky Sermon: January 9

This week’s Torah portion, Yitro, gives voice to a core Reform Jewish conviction: Torah was never meant to be static. Even before Sinai, authority is shared, limits are named, and human judgment matters. The rabbis later imagine a Torah so expansive that even Moses cannot recognize its future forms—yet God still calls it “from Sinai.” […]

Is Religion Universal? Is religion universal? Across cultures and centuries, human beings keep returning to the same images—trees, paths, light, ascent, and return. Carl Jung called these archetypes “patterns of meaning” that arise wherever people wrestle with fear, hope, and mortality. Islam speaks of a Tree that warns against grasping eternity. Buddhism finds awakening beneath […]

Small acts of Kindness There is something sacred about the way people learn to care for one another. For many, the culture around Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead became a school of kindness, where strangers greeted one another with hugs, said “I love you” without irony, and made room for each other on the […]