history — Rabbi Adam Lavitt — Sermons & Writing

Melted Down to Our Essence (Erev Yom Kippur 5782)

Three years ago, my husband, Alex, and I had a direct experience of melting down metal, and finding history transformed in that act: It was the fall of 2017, and our wedding date was set. My mom had given me my grandfather’s wedding ring. With my mom’s permission, we decided to melt it down, and combine it with some material from Alex’s family - and from it form two rings, our wedding bands - to represent the way, in marrying each other, we were bringing our families’ stories together.

sermonAdam LavittSeptember 15, 2021forgiveness, transformation, history, Holocaust, High Holidays

This is My God (Pride Shabbat)

Though LGTBQ Pride month is celebrated these days with a popular parade supported by corporate sponsors, it wasn’t always this way: the reason we celebrate in June is to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a spontaneous act of resistance, at a time same-sex relationships were punished as crimes. This uprising became known as the major turning point in the Gay Liberation Movement. Judaism and other religions, too, were countercultural in their founding: they arose as spontaneous acts of resistance to challenge an oppressive status quo, and offer a prophetic vision of a just and liberated future.

Adam LavittJune 25, 2021pride, LGBTQ, liberation, current events, identity, history, homophobia

Shabbat Mishpatim

“You shall not wrong the ger, nor shall you oppress him; for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.” Remember you are a nation of immigrants, recall your ancestors who fled ancient Egypt, Czarist Russia, Nazi Germany. Don’t build walls that cut you off from those memories. Rather, let these memories expand your hearts across the borders that threaten to cut you off from your past.

Adam LavittFebruary 21, 2020compassion, immigration, history

Shabbat Lech Lecha

According to Professor Deborah Lipstadt, recent author of Antisemitism: Here and Now, the way to fight antisemitism isn’t to focus on the threat — isn’t to hide in the face of danger — but instead to show the haters that we are Jews. It is incumbent on us to know who we are and to be proud of what we stand for: even if — especially because — it is different than what most people do; whether this means observing times of rest and special ways to eat, or fighting for the rights of the stranger, because we were strangers.

Adam LavittNovember 8, 2019anti-semitism, history, Lech Lecha

Simchat Torah

On Simchat Torah, we read the end and the beginning of the Torah in one breath, so to speak – as one unbroken story. This leads scholar and poet Esther Schor to argue that “the creation of the world is God’s shiva for Moses.” For seven days, God holds God’s breath – carries inside of Godself Moses’ life force, until finally God forms the first human from earth, blows into this its nostrils the breath of life God took from Moses: the last breath Moses breathes out thus becomes Adam’s first.

Adam LavittOctober 18, 2019anti-semitism, history, family stories, Simchat Torah

Writing the World into Being (Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5779)

Rosh Hashanah celebrates the birthday of the world, yom harat olam. The moment the universe shimmered with possibility. That is why we say, “On Rosh Hashanah it is written”: the ink is still fresh. We imagine what words might fill the pages of the year ahead. But it’s so hard to stay focused on the white space of this new chapter when our vision is cluttered with headlines.

Adam LavittSeptember 9, 2018hope, poetry, history

Descended From Trauma Enriched By Hope

The first person to toast my sister and her fiancé at their rehearsal dinner was a descendent of Mrs. Hamilton. She recalled her grandmother, a “righteous gentile” who had sponsored our grandfather and his family to immigrate to America in 1938. She described how delighted our grandparents would be to see our families gathered together for this celebratory moment. I wasn’t the only one moved to tears by the way she brought their memories into this rite of passage in our family.

Adam LavittJuly 13, 2016family stories, history, hope, compassion, Holocaust, wedding

Telling Stories of Trauma for Healing and Compassion (Parshat Ki Tetzei, Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19)

On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, a group in Japan launched a project in which storytellers are training to retell the experiences of survivors. My grandfather participated in a similar project 20 years ago, the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which sought to collect testimony from survivors before the experience of the Holocaust was lost to the world. My family’s participation in this project instilled in me the belief that these stories, though painful, should be actively remembered and repeated.

Adam LavittAugust 27, 2015Holocaust, family stories, history, compassion, Amalek, epigenetics, Deuteronomy, Ki Tetzei

Digging Wells for Generations

Two Israelis were stabbed last week, Israeli military and police response has continued, and leaders within Fatah have begun talking about a third intifada. There’s no rational response to the heartbreak and fear the Jewish people are feeling right now toward circumstances that threaten our connection to a place we call home. Indeed, we are a people who has historically been forced, in a state of fear, to flee from land to land, deprived of the luxury to think of any place as home.

Adam LavittNovember 17, 2014family stories, exile, resilience, history

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