Posts by Cyril
Lech Lecha: The Call You Cannot See, Only Hear
October 23 English translations of the Hebrew Torah are, by definition, limited in what they can convey. This is true of every translation. Take the opening words of this week’s portion. The Hebrew says lech lecha, usually translated as “Go forth.” It is a perfectly good translation, but it doesn’t quite capture the feeling of…
Read MoreOCTOBER 7TH REFLECTION
The events of October 7th cut to the very core of our Jewish souls. We witnessed a horror that words can barely contain. We saw images we wish we could unsee—images of cruelty and terror that have been burned into our memories and will remain etched upon our hearts. We felt a grief so deep…
Read MoreBereishit: Beginning Again
A meditation on Simchat TorahCBI – Boca – 2026 Rabbis, like families, all experience a kind of emotional whiplash. So many of us have stories about a death in the family only to have a simcha, a joyous event, a few days or weeks later. I think we have all seen it or experienced it.…
Read MoreThe Regret that Connects: A Shabbat Shuva Reflection on Hosea 14
September 18, 2026Congregation B’nai Israel: Boca Raton There is a Hassidic story about a Jew who kept a tavern in a small village had, over the years, quietly fallen away from Torah observance. Business was business, and the demands of running the tavern — open late, serving all kinds of customers — had worn down…
Read MoreShards of Regret & Shards of Light
Second Day Rosh Hashanna Congregation B’nai Israel – Boca 2026 In my first year of rabbinic school, I found myself in the bottom of 30 foot hole digging in an archeological ruin in Israel. My discoveries were hardly earth-shattering although my partner and I found a floor of the very earliest Cannanite dwelling in Tel…
Read MoreB’reishit: The Beginning We Carry, The Beginning We Build. RH Morning 2026 – Boca
Whenever I am back in Toronto visiting my parents’ grave, there are places that continue to draw me in no matter how many times I have been there. My old primary school. Junior high. High school. The temple I grew up in. All the places that were formative throughout my life. And the moment I’m…
Read MoreSteel, Smoke, and Chesed: A Prayer for Twenty-Five Years – Erev Rosh Hashanna 25 Years after 9/11
How many of us remember where we were 25 years ago today? Twenty-five years is long enough that some of you weren’t even born yet, and long enough that some of us have to reach back through a quarter century of mornings to find that one morning again — but find it we do, don’t…
Read MoreFrom Memory to Ritual
A Sermon for Parashat Ki TavoAugust 28, 2026 Imagine a farmer in ancient Israel. He has walked days to Jerusalem, a basket of first fruits balanced on his shoulder — figs, dates, pomegranates, the literal fruit of his labor. He hands the basket to the kohen, the priest in the temple. But his obligation is…
Read MoreAn Eiphah Shleimah: The Honest Measure of a Kehilla
This week’s parasha, Ki Teitzei, is famous for its sheer variety. In the span of a few chapters we move from the laws of the beautiful captive, to the rebellious son, to returning a neighbor’s lost ox, to the rites of levirate marriage, to the command to remember what Amalek did to us on the…
Read MoreTzedek, Tzedek Tirdof: The Justice That Never Lets You Rest
There are verses from the Torah that almost everyone seems to know. ‘In the beginning God created…’ – ‘Let my people go…’ – ‘Get up and leave your home toward the Land that I will show you…’ And, this week, in the Torah portion comes another one that may not be as well known but…
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