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Welcome to the Rummage Soul: Mussar's Entry Code to Your Soul - Kol Nidre 5775

And here's a link to my Kol Nidre Sermon from Temple Shir Tikva, Yom Kippur 5775 Welcome to the Rummage Soul!

Unbound: the Year of Unraveling - Erev Rosh Hashanah 5775

Since I'm unable to insert my sermon with proper citations in this setting - check it out on Temple Shir Tikva's website.  Shana tovah!  Jen Erev Rosh Hashanaha Sermon 5775 - Rabbi Jen Gubitz

Shabbat Shuva: Return to Sender (From 5774)

Shabbat Shuva: Return to Sender September 6, 2013 ~ 3 Tishrei 5774 Rabbi Jen Gubitz Turning the key, with a creak the mailbox opened.  Thumbing through the pile she found another packet from AdSense with unusable coupons unless you plan to redo your house every month; a charitable foundation’s solicitation with more return address labels; another’s solicitation that was an exact replica of the form email they’d sent her 10 times that week; an excise tax bill from the town; and an envelope so dog eared and tattered it looked like it had traveled through decades. And in big bold sharpie-black letters across the front: Return to Sender, Address Unknown. You can probably already predict this extended metaphor: for we are in that period of Jewish time when the postal service to the divine needs to add Sundays to its delivery schedule, needs to hire extra elves (wrong holiday), needs to hire extra messengers (perhaps angels), to support all the influx of pieces arriving in the m

There shall be no needy... Parashat Re'eh Flasback - 5773

There shall be no needy... Parashat Re’eh August 2, 2013 ~ 26 Av 5773 Rabbi Jen Gubitz We ran bags of winter coats down broadway, hung them on the racks, turned our backs, and within 10 minutes they were gone. It was freezing in New York City that winter. Filenes Basement, may its memory be a blessing, was going out of business. The flagship store in Union Square had rows and rows of racks and racks stocked with discounted winter wear: coats, hats, scarves, gloves. We had 45 minutes, a huge store credit to spend, and the HUC Soup Kitchen ’s clothing rack awaiting our purchase a mere 10 blocks away. As I marched around that winter in my tundra-looks-like-a-sleeping-bag- down winter coat, multiple options for hat and scarf to suit my daily outfit or mood, warm gloves, usually a hot cup of coffee in tow - I knew that the winter wear we were purchasing was not as insulated, not as aesthetically pleasing, not as comfortable, not as nice - and simply not as warm - as

Our 3 Boys of Freedom Summer 1964

Our 3 Boys of Freedom Summer Parashat Korach and the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Summer Rabbi Jen Gubitz June 20, 2014 ~ 23 Sivan 5774 You can imagine the heat. The sun beating on backs, the sweat bea d ing on brows, the sense of justice boiling up in hearts. Equality! they fought! Integrity! was their demand. Brotherhood! was their expectation. A rebellion, really.  A rebellious hotbed of anger, violence, disenfranchisement.  A rebellious hotbed of faith, truth and hope. You can imagine the heat. Freedom Summer 1964. The sun beating on backs, sweat beading on brows of an African-American Christian and two white Jews. The sense of justice boiling up in their hearts under the politically hot sun of Mississippi as they worked to register African-Americans to vote. Freedom Summer 1964. You can imagine or maybe you remember it. A rebellion, really, of thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, many of th

Parashat Sh’mini - Hearing Silence

Parashat Sh’mini - Hearing Silence In Memory of Elissa Froman, z'l April 5, 2013 ~ 26 Nissan 5773 Rabbi Jen Gubitz Source texts drawn from Nehama Leibowitz’s New Studies in Vayikra There was a hush in the room. What to say? What not to say? Amid the silence, memories, stories, feelings came alive. And though she was no longer, and we were speechless, there was so much to say, and yet no one spoke. But the silence as it often does said more than words ever could.   In the beginning and in the end, we listen - for a sign of breath, for a sign of life... In the last breath, and before the first breath - we listen into the silence. Silence is technically the complete absence of sound. But living, we know, breathing is quite noisy. And so actually is silence. We listen, we hear even in the deafening quiet. ** In this week's Torah portion, Sh'mini, Vayidom Aharon And Aaron was silent. His