Category: Drasha
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Beyond the Megillah
Purim usually brings laughter, but this year the news from the Middle East feels particularly heavy. As we watch regimes shift and sirens sound, how do we find the genuine courage to celebrate? I have been reflecting on the resilience of our friends in Israel and the humbling grace of the Baha’i community. Let us…
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The Geometry of Wholeness
In a world that prizes the “finished” individual, the Torah offers a provocative alternative: the half-shekel. By requiring a contribution that is intentionally incomplete, the mitzvah suggests that we cannot arrive before the Divine entirely on our own. Rabbi Adrian explores how our modern obsession with self-reliance can lead to isolation, and why the “grammar…
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Memory as a Sacred Obligation
The silence left behind by the stopped hostage clock is not the joyous quiet of a struggle won, but the heavy stillness of a cycle closed. In Parashat Beshallach, we read that Moses took the bones of Joseph with him out of Egypt. Even in a life or death escape, the leader of our people…
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The Weight of Witnessing: Why Your Heart Feels Heavy for Others
Looking at the 10 plagues at the beginning of the Exodus narrative, I think they not only strike Egypt but also pass through the Israelite houses as sound, fear, and memory. The Israelites may be spared some of the blows, but they still live with the cries in the night and the knowledge of what…
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A Letter to Myself: Reflections on my father’s first Yahrzeit
In the twelve months since my father’s passing, our community has accompanied around twenty individuals on their final journeys. For a rabbi, walking with the bereaved is a constant, but this year the weight of it felt different. There was a strange, heavy resonance between my private study, where I sat with my own grief,…
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The Courage of Inadequacy
We often imagine the great biblical leaders as individuals of unshakeable confidence. We tend to picture the cinematic version of Moses, standing fearless before Pharaoh, or the booming voice of a prophet thundering against corruption. Yet, when we look closely at the texts appointed for this Shabbat, we find something far more human, fragile, and…
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At the End: Finding God After the Chaos
The Hebrew word that gives this week’s Torah portion its name, Mikeitz, translates simply as ‘at the end’. It refers to the end of two years of Joseph’s imprisonment, marking the precise moment his fortune shifts. In the biblical narrative, the timing is impeccable. Pharaoh dreams, the cupbearer suddenly remembers Joseph, and in a whirlwind…
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Our Civic Covenant: Faith and Democracy
In a time of deep societal division and rising anxiety, Rabbi Adrian Schell delivers a powerful address for Civic Shabbat, “A Covenant of Courage.”Drawing on the ancient call to Abraham in Parashat Lech Lecha and the prophet Micah’s vision of peace, Rabbi Schell explores the urgent challenge of our time: the breaking of our “civic…
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The Lonely God and the Creation of Relationship
There is a strange tenderness in the second creation story.The first chapter of Genesis is full of grandeur and order: light and darkness, sea and sky, evening and morning. Everything unfolds with rhythm and precision, and when it is done, God looks at the world and calls it very good. Then the tone changes. The…
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How Can We Rejoice? A Sukkot Message Two Years After October 7th
My sermon for Erev Sukkot addresses a direct and painful collision in the Jewish calendar: the beginning of ‘z’man simchateinu’, the season of our joy, falls on the exact second anniversary of the October 7th atrocities. It explores how the sukkah itself, with its flimsy walls and lesson in vulnerability, will not let us hide…
