Rabbi Adam Lavitt — Sermons & Writing

Covenant with the Web of Life (Shabbat Noah)

These days we are facing, with increasing alarm, the consequences of our own self-centeredness. Our plunder of the earth’s resources has led to climate change – record-breaking temperatures; floods, wildfires, and hurricanes. It is as if the world is warning us to change our ways before it is too late. Torah tells us, when the world first came into being, God told humanity it could master the natural world, use it for its survival, as long as it remembered the air, food, and water all came from God. But humanity eventually forgot, and became greedy and irresponsible. God sent a flood to wipe away creation, and start over again.

Adam LavittOctober 23, 2020environment, climate change, Genesis, Noah

We Have What We Need (Shabbat Sukkot)

This Shabbat leads us into the final leg of our journey, the holiday of Sukkot, during which we are commanded to dwell in booths that serve as our temporary homes for 8 days. Without this holiday, we would quickly return to our ordinary lives, and risk losing everything we discovered on our journey from Tisha B’av to Yom Kippur. So, instead, we build a Sukkah, an in-between-space in which we can integrate what we learned.

Adam LavittOctober 2, 2020hiking, Sukkot

Choosing Life from the Belly of the Whale (Yom Kippur Day)

Over the last few months, like Jonah, we have each descended into the murky depths. And as we peered out at our world — through computers and TV screens — we, like Jonah, were dumbstruck as we witnessed the histories upon which our nation was built: the ongoing racial violence carried out by our institutions, a living legacy of slavery and dehumanization; the disparities in health care that have resulted in disproportionate losses to COVID amongst communities of color; environmental degradation wrought by corporations built on greed and plunder.

Adam LavittSeptember 28, 2020teshuvah, Yom Kippur, Jonah, Blacklivesmatter

Choosing Life as a Nation (Erev Yom Kippur)

As Jews, on Yom Kippur, some of us dress in white, or fast and abstain from water, to intentionally wake ourselves up to life’s fleeting nature. As we observe Yom Kippur this year, we can’t help but think about how many people do not intentionally choose to be reminded of this, but instead have it forced on them by unjust policies and hateful acts.

Adam LavittSeptember 27, 2020voting, John Lewis, Blacklivesmatter, teshuvah

Choosing Life with a Stranger (Rosh Hashanah Day)

Yesterday I spoke about Rosh Hashanah’s invitation to us, b’charta b’chayyim – to renew our commitment to life, even in the face of the world’s brokenness and our own limitations. But how can ordinary people like you and me make a life-giving choice — when it means doing something out of character for us, something we might never have done or imagined doing before?

Adam LavittSeptember 19, 2020Rosh Hashanah, family stories, Holocaust, High Holidays

Choosing Life in a Pandemic (Erev Rosh Hashanah)

Over the past many months, many of us have understandably become numb in the face of overwhelming cruelty, injustice, and death we have faced personally…. As we armored our hearts against the horror of the past year, we may have found we became less able to fully receive positive experiences: the love of friends and family, the taste of good food, the beauty of the natural world around us. Rosh Hashanah, yom harat haolam is not a time to judge ourselves for this: rather, it’s an invitation to wake up to how we are choosing to live. It’s an opportunity to return, to start over, to renew ourselves; to use our awareness of life’s fragility to live with a bit more intention, to open our hearts once more so they can respond to the challenges we face, and fully receive its joys — so we can live and feel more fully.

Adam LavittSeptember 18, 2020Rosh Hashanah, renewal, current events

Shabbat Ki Tavo

Even though we are still in the midst of exile, confronted with unthinkable suffering, the prophet calls on us to imagine what it could look like to live as if the world is suffused with divine light….Just weeks after the breakage of Tisha B’av, Isaiah tells us to envision the world’s hidden wholeness. To recall our endless capacity to heal and find new hope, as individuals, and as a global community.

Adam LavittSeptember 4, 2020community, imagination, Elul, redemption

Shabbat Shoftim

When we are indifferent towards the suffering of another, anochi, anochi: there is my “self” here and other “selves” separate from my reality, and capacity to care. By contrast, we all know the sense of wholeness that comes from being truly present to another person. This feeling, Kedushat Levi claims, moves us -- if only for a moment -- from the world of separation, into the world of wholeness, and unifies God, makes God echad, one.

Adam LavittAugust 21, 2020compassion, High Holidays, Elul

Shabbat Eikev

It is too easy in normal times – when we feel safe, healthy, undisturbed to mistakenly think we are self-sufficient, to, in Isaiah’s words this week, “walk by the blaze of [our own] fire.” During times of great disruption, like our ancestors faced, like we face today, we see the walls of the familiar structures around us laying in ruin. We confront our own vulnerability, our deep dependence on each other; are reminded anything that happens to any part of the great web of life in which we and the natural world are bound, affects all of us.

Adam LavittAugust 6, 2020teshuvah, COVID, vulnerability

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