sid.schwarz Sermons and Speeches building spiritual communities, Jewish Renewal, Jewish spirituality, Reb Zalman, the rabbinate
Note: In January 2014 I was invited to deliver the keynote address at the Ohala national convention, the association of Jewish Renewal Rabbis that was held in Boulder, CO. It was significant because my charge from the leadership of the organization was to speak about Jewish Renewal in light of the fact that the charismatic […]
sid.schwarz Articles democracy, Israel, Netanyahu, racism
There is a wonderful phrase in Hebrew that drips with sardonic, Jewish wit. It is when someone says “gileta et America”, meaning “so you discovered America!”. It is said to someone when they say something so obvious that everyone has known it for years, but the person who shared it put the thought out in […]
sid.schwarz Articles activism, clergy, homelessness, Interfaith, social action, spiritual role model
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a life counts for a million or more. Last week I attended a memorial service for Reverend John Steinbruck who died on March 1st at the age of 85. When I moved to Washington D.C. in 1984 to take the post as the executive director of the […]
sid.schwarz Articles Haiti, human rights, Jewish identiity, Jewish service missions, Jewish social justice
When I accepted an invitation from the Israeli organization, Tevel B’Tzedek, to travel to Haiti a few months after the devastating earthquake in 2010 to do some teaching for their disaster relief team on the ground, little did I know that it would lead to one of the most fulfilling projects of my rabbinic career. […]
sid.schwarz Articles Ecology, Environment, Shmita, Sustainability
There are times when even atheists have trouble denying that there is a “hand of God” at work in history. How else to explain the coincidence of the largest ever gathering of humanity to assemble around the world to highlight the urgency of global action on climate change the week before Rosh haShana 5775, a […]
sid.schwarz Sermons and Speeches Bible, Poverty, World Poverty
This talk was delivered at the annual meeting of the World Bank held in Washington D.C. in October 2014. Rabbi Sid was part of a panel of clergy that was invited to offer their respective faith tradition’s approach to poverty *** Judaism is a tradition of text and interpretation. The Torah, or the Five Books […]
sid.schwarz Articles Hanukkah, human rights
Normally we think of human rights in an international context. But recent events in our country have highlighted how the human rights of African Americans are routinely violated by police departments all around the country. White America may now be waking up to a reality that Black America has lived with for decades. Some of […]
sid.schwarz Sermons and Speeches Identity, Kol Nidre, Memory, sermons
I’ve been thinking a lot about memory recently, but I can’t remember why. Sorry. That is a cheap laugh. Here is a better one. Three elderly people are sharing with one another the trials of aging. One says: “Sometimes I catch myself standing in front of the refrigerator with a jar of mayonnaise in my […]
sid.schwarz Articles human rights, Israel, social justice
The season of reckoning is upon us. For Jews, the sentiment will likely evoke thoughts of the upcoming Days of Awe. Both the Hebrew month of Elul and then the ten days of repentance that starts with Rosh HaShana and ends with Yom Kippur is the time when Jews are called upon to go into […]
sid.schwarz Articles Israel, Jewish people, Next Gen Jews, Zionism
Students of American Jewry often point to 1967 as a watershed in the evolution of the American Jewish community. The anxiety that American Jews felt in the weeks leading up to the Six Day War was palpable. There was no evidence that Israel could defend itself against any concerted Arab military assault, no less a […]