PARASHAT TOLDOTE – GAINESVILLE I have been teaching Torah classes in one fashion or another for decades.  To be honest, I think it is my favourite time of the week.  But what is it about Torah study that makes it so joyous?  It’s the surprises that come along with it.…

CHAIYAE SARAH – Gainesville When I was 11 years old, I distinctly remember going to my grandfather’s 70th birthday.  This was in 1970. And, as is often the case, one moment has stayed with me throughout my life. That moment was when I saw my grandfather simply walking across the…

PARASHAT VAYEIRA – GAINESVILLE The Torah likes to talk in coded language, or at least we read Torah as if it’s speaking in a coded language.  That’s what’s happening this week.  Take a listen to opening verse: וַיֵּרָ֤א אֵלָיו֙ יְהוָ֔ה ‘God appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre.’ The…

Rabbi Cy Stanway – Gainesville The parasha this week is something of a pivot point, if you think about it.  But it’s a pivot point that has been somewhat misunderstood.  Let me explain.  You see, up to this point the Torah has been concerned with really big things. Creation of…

Bereshit – Gainesville Welcome back to the beginning of the Torah and probably the most misunderstood portion in Western religious history.  This is because, more than any other section of the bible, so many people take this portion completely literally.  The earth was created in 6 days.  Man and woman created on the…

SUKKOT GAINESVILLE Americans have a deep desire to either be happy, pretend we are happy, or make everyone else happy! In Teen Academy class, during a very spirited discussion of suicide and the Jewish texts around that difficult subject, one of the students suggested that it is our job to…

Yom Kippur Morning Rabbi Cy Stanway American society loves to assign names to significant and, oftentimes, not-so-significant events. Every month brings with it a whole set of “Whatever Appreciation of the Month.” There is everything from Cheese Appreciation Month to Hug Your Podiatrist Month. I am not sure who pays…

Shir Shalom – Gainesville Temple Shir Shalom: Gainesville
 Rabbi Cy Stanway When I became an American many years ago, someone told me that it is now my duty to pay attention to baseball.  Taking their admonition to heart, I did what I always do when I need to expose myself…

Rosh Hashanna Morning 2025 – GainesvilleRabbi Cy Stanway  Several years ago, the tabloids had a field day when the beautiful, young, troubled Christina Onassis committed suicide, leaving behind her five-year-old daughter. In a phrase that probably encapsulated much of her tragic depression, the papers defined her as the “heiress to…

Gainesville, 2025 Even though I pretty in the dark about baseball, even I know the iconic picture of Babe Ruth from Game 3 of the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs. In the fifth inning, Ruth stepped up to the plate, gestured toward the outfield, and hit the next…

Nitzavim – Gainesville I am not sure why, but this week’s portion is my all-time favorite. I have tried to understand why I like it so much. The only thing I can think of is its striking imagery.  Atem nitzavim hayom – You are standing here together today, all of…

Ki Tavo – Gainesville I sometimes wonder how many love songs have ever been written.  Hard to know.  So I asked ChatGPT and here is what I found:  On Spotify alone, there are millions of songs tagged with themes of love, heartbreak, romance, or relationships. From ancient times to the…

PARASHAT SHOFTIM – GAINESVILLE When scholars began looking at the book of Deuteronomy from a literary-critical point of view and not just as a religious text, the general consensus was that the book was written long after the first 4 books of the Torah and that it reflected a moment…

Parashat Re’eh – Gainesville In 1981, I was in my last year of college in Toronto and, out of the blue, appeared a 20 year-old who galvanized the entire country. His name was Terry Fox and he had developed an osteosarcoma in his leg with then needed to be amputated.…

PARSHAT EKEIV – GAINESVILLE One of the interesting ways of reading the Bible is trying to figure out the meanings of words. It’s not always so easy.  For instance, the word Shalom is one that everyone knows.  We all know it means ‘peace.’  But what, exactly, does that mean? If…

Parashat Vaetchanan – Gainesville Some years ago, a colleague of Stella’s did something totally human: she tripped at her front door. When she came to the Orthodox Jewish day school she was teaching at, the rabbis asked her what happened and in a flash they came to her house to…

Parashat Devarim – Gainesville Let’s go back to near the book of Numbers and play a little Columbo episode. Remember the story of the spies that Moses sent into the Land of Israel?  Well, in our parasha this week, Moses recalls that episode. But when we put on our detective…

Parashat Mattot-Maseh 2025Rabbi Cy Stanway – Shir Shalom – Gainesville Florida Mattot: Let them Eat Brioche is not a NegotiationJuly 25 – GainesvilleRabbi Cy Stanway You all know the expression; two Jews, three opinions.  It usually elicits a chuckle because we know its true. Jews seem to occupy something of…

Rabbi Cy StanwayShir Shalom – GainesvilleJuly 11, 2025 There is an old saying that what makes God laugh is seeing our plans for the future or, as John Lennon once said, ‘Life is what happens while you are making other plans.’  It might be more accurate to say, rather, that…

No More Hiding… GAINESVILLE – JULY 4 2025 When I was at camp many years ago, one of the standard exercises we used to do was the now familiar ‘are you a Jewish American or an American Jew’? Disregarding the fact that I was Canadian, it was an interesting exercise.…

Dvar for June 25 Korach The Torah portion this week is one of the most confusing in the entire Torah.  Its words are clear and the narrative is straightforward.  So what’s the problem? First, let’s go over the text a bit. Korach is a priest and, as a priest, is already in…

As you may know, I try to find Jewish content and Jewish meaning in everything.  There always seems to be a Jewish moment in even the most secular of things.  I have found Jewish moments in baseball.  After all, what is the whole point of baseball except finding your way…

Yom Kippur Morning 2023 Rabbi Cy Stanway I want to share a true story[1] with you:  In 1975, in Cologne, Germany, there was an ambitious high school student who loved jazz music when no one else around here seemed to have any interest. And so at 16 she basically became a…

Erev Yom Kippur Erev Yom Kippur 2023Rabbi Cy Stanway I love playing around with words and expressions. There is always insight to be gleaned by dwelling on a word or a phrase and creating a midrash on the fly. For instance, in Hebrew the word for king is, of course, Melech.  The…

Whither Free Israel?Rosh Hashanna Morning 2023Rabbi Cy Stanway Many years ago, I had the most embarrassing moment of my life, and believe me, this was the most embarrassing.  And it had nothing to do with me! My whole family was coming back from Yom Kippur services. Now, keep in mind that…

Rabbi Cy Stanway There was a fascinating article I found during the pandemic that has stayed with me. I want to share part of it with you. If I asked you, ‘when did civilization start?’ you might say something like, ‘when people moved into cities’ or ‘when clay pots were…

New Words: Old Problems Yom Kippur Morning 2022 Rabbi Cy Stanway Let’s start this morning with a little quiz. What do these words have in common? Long hauler Hard pass Body shame Overshare Shrinkflation The only connection these words to have one another and to a couple of hundred more…

Rosh Hashanna 2022 I am going to start my Rosh Hashanna sermon talking about something I don’t usually think about: tornadoes.  But we’ll get there in a moment.  Before we get into tornadoes, let’s take a look at a very interesting experiment that was done in South Africa between 1956…

Yom Kippur Morning 2022 Of all the days in the Jewish year, you would think that Yom Kippur is the one where we put on display all the examples of repentance and forgiveness, teshuva and heshbon ha-nefesh.  I mean, what better way to illustrate to us all not the just…

YOM KIPPUR In the Middle Ages throughout Europe, over-zealous priests in the Catholic Church were so afraid of Jewish thought that, betwefacen 1232 and 1319, they would gather up every Jewish book they could find and burn it. This way, they figured, Jews couldn’t be Jewish without their books, and…

From the Book of Lamentations in memory of those killed by another round of gun violence in Uvalde: Bitterly she weeps in the night, Her cheek wet with tears. Uvalde bitterly weeps in the night Her cheeks wet with tears. We hear them, between gasps of pain and incomprehension the…

It’s often said that life can change in the blink of an eye. Anyone who has ever experienced a sudden death, or any kind of life-changing surprise would agree, of course. Life can change in the blink of an eye.  That is why I am glad my eyes didn’t blink…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Foot Erev Pesach – April 8, 2020 Why is this night different than any other night? When we ask that simple question, the answer this year can be either, ‘Where do I begin?’ or ‘Oy!  Where have you been?!’  No one, and I…

March 11, 2021 – One year after…. This is the first anniversary of the declaration that COVID was a pandemic.  I should correct myself: COVID is still a pandemic.  Anniversaries are a good time to reflect.  So let’s reflect and see how much has changed.  But I don’t want to…

When a maniac gets a gun, a maniac does maniacal things.  The murderer of Asian women in Atlanta ought to strike terror in everyone of our hearts, for sure.  From what we understand, a man buys a 9mm pistol in the morning and kills 8 people by the afternoon.  He…

When I lived down South, one of the first things I heard was how much the South had changed from its previous reputation.  No longer was it a place that was oozing racism and, even though there were problems, look how much progress we have made.  On the surface, that…

When a maniac gets a gun, a maniac does maniacal things.  The murderer of Asian women in Atlanta ought to strike terror in everyone of our hearts, for sure.  From what we understand, a man buys a 9mm pistol in the morning and kills 8 people by the afternoon.  He…

March 11, 2021 – One year after…. This is the first anniversary of the declaration that COVID was a pandemic.  I should correct myself: COVID is still a pandemic.  Anniversaries are a good time to reflect.  So let’s reflect and see how much has changed.  But I don’t want to…

The events of yesterday are evoking responses throughout the broad spectrum of political opinion. There is so much noise out there that it hurts. We all know what we saw. And what we saw was a burning hatred pitting one American against another. It seems that hating our fellow American…

As you may know, I try to find Jewish content and Jewish meaning in everything.  There always seems to be a Jewish moment in even the most secular of things.  I have found Jewish moments in baseball.  After all, what is the whole point of baseball except finding your way…

If you were to look at the Days of Awe from 36,000 feet, you would see something that you may never have seen before.  You see, the Days of Awe are not simply Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  They are really a 53 day period beginning at the start of…

In the middle ages, it is well known that the Jewish community was constantly under assault.  Anti-Jewish crusades, daily anti-Semitism and periodic bursts of manic Jew hatred was simply a way of life.  So what did the Jews do?  Their response was not to hide and cower and discard their…

Many years ago, 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 Dan.  If you ever read ‘The Tel’ the very…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootJuly 8, 2020 So now it appears that we are at some kind of a point in this pandemic when we are supposed to open the schools. The politicians know that the virus tends to be more fatal in older people so they…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootJune 22, 2020 I love science. Always have. When I was in school, I couldn’t wait for science class. Biology mesmerized me. Physics tried to satisfy the many ‘whys’ that danced around in my head. And chemistry – oy gevalt – the hardest…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootJune 8, 2020 As my congregants will tell you and for which they jokingly ridicule me, I am not a sports fan. Of course I have been to sporting events and enjoyed them – especially hockey. But I could not name the players…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootJune 4, 2020 When the President walked to the Episcopal Church through a phalanx of armed guards to hold up a Bible for what was a photo op immediately after his announcement to send in the troops, I fully understood in my own…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One LegMay 28, 2020 The Jewish festival of Shavuot begins this evening. In case you are unfamiliar with the holiday, it lands on the 50th day after Passover begins. It is the time of the first harvest, the time of the giving of the…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One Leg May 21, 2020 I went to the race track once and bet on a horse. No, really, I did.  In fact, I learned to read the racesheet, compared the track conditions to the track conditions the horses were used to running in,…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One LegMay 18, 2020 Of all the Zoom conferences I had in the past two months, I had a most unusual one last night with my colleagues from Camp Erin. Camp Erin, if you don’t know, is a nation camp movement and my local…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootMay 15 – Erev Shabbat It’s interesting that I haven’t really put pen to paper to do my sorta-daily blog. I was talking about this with one of my children and she said something interesting – ‘You are the only one putting pressure…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootMay 11, 2020 So it is pretty clear that the country is starting to ‘open up.’ No one really knows what’s going to happen but the epidemiologists have a pretty good clue. Many will open. Many will get sick. Some will die. It…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootMay 6, 2020 Much to Stella’s chagrin, I have totally taken over my corner of the office with computers and audio equipment. As all of us are finding out, working from home takes up a lot of space. It is but one of…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootMay 2, 2020 I have been correctly characterized as ‘hyperactive.’ It was a huge problem in primary school and It was made worse because, back then, a lot people thought hyperactivity was some kind of intellectual deficiency. (In fact, the school psychologists even…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootApril 29, 2020 We have all been touched by death in past couple of months. One way or the other it has penetrated our homes and our consciousness. We are subject to daily death counts and the polls of those who are sick.…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootApril 23, 2020 It’s starting to hit home now for a lot of people. As disastrous as the virus is, I have not heard of too many people who have acquired it in my own circle. That is now starting to change. I…

While Standing (On One Foot) Six Feet ApartApril 20, 2020 The pandemic is having an interesting effect on me. Yes my hair is growing too long…but Stella wants to attack me with clippers. We will see how that goes. Yes, I am reading a lot. (I finally am getting close…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootErev Shabbat April 17, 2020 A little history. Between about 1300 and 1850 the world experienced what is now called a ‘Little Ice Age.’ It is exactly what it sounds like. Throughout the world there was simply no escape from the cold in…

You are all probably familiar with the Chinese expression “May you live in interesting times.”  We live in what are probably the most interesting times that any of us ever have, especially those born after WW II.  We have all heard the words: ‘unprecedented, unreal, surreal’ and so forth.  As…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) On One FootApril 14, 2020 I am at the point in this pandemic that I need a haircut. SaraAnn wants to experiment dyeing my hair. I don’t think I will go that route. Stella is adamantly against it. I lost that vote, for sure. But…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One LegApril 13, 2020 Thousands of Americans are dying each day from COVID-19. No matter how upbeat any politician is, things aren’t getting better anytime soon. We are stunned into silence and each of us is going to pick up the pieces in our…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootShabbat Pesach April 11, 2020 There is not a lot of good to find in the middle of a pandemic. 20,000 dead, 500,000 ill represents a shared grief on a national scale that will be remembered as pivotal moments in most our lives.…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootPesach Day OneApril 9, 2020 In Greek philosophy, Plato describes a strange concept that grows more appealing to me every day. It is called the ‘world of forms.’ Bear with me. You are probably sitting on a chair. It is easily identified as…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootErev Pesach – April 8, 2020 Why is this night different than any other night? When we ask that simple question, the answer this year can be either, ‘Where do I begin?’ or ‘Oy! Where have you been?!’ No one, and I mean…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootApril 6, 2020 My daughter was ambling through one of the open air markets a couple of months ago (BC – Before Covid!) and she found a gift for me. It is sitting on my desk in the temple office. It is mug…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FoodErev Shabbat, April 3, 2020 The Israeli Chief Rabbinate just issued a halachic ruling about Zooming on Pesach. It can be distilled to one word: forbidden. But, of course. Their logic, though, is fundamentally correct. Since no lives are endangered if you don’t…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Foot April 2, 2020 I am frustrated and angry. There is a well-known Hassidic tale that goes like this: ‘What will it be like in the world to come? It is said that evildoers would be punished by not being able to bend…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootApril 1, 2020 Pirke Avot, the important sayings of our Sages said this some 1800 years ago: Rabbi Levitas a man of Yavneh said: be exceeding humble spirit, for the end of man is the worm. Humility is the characteristic of a wise…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Foot March 31, 2020 We have all heard the expression ‘Numbers don’t lie.’ As the US passes the 3,000 dead milestone and has now officially passed the death toll from 9/11 it is important to understand that the numbers do lie. Yes, numbers…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootMarch 30, 2020 There are always some silver linings to dark times. When this viral pandemic began, I never thought I would be spending so much time every week with the teens and young adults. And, while it is only online, they have…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootShabbat March 28, 2020 As we enter in the book of Leviticus, I am struck by the parallels we see today in our current health crisis. Leviticus is a long series of commandments about the sacrificial service at the Tabernacle. There are laws…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootErev Shabbat March 27, 2020 Shabbat is about to descend upon us and bring its peace. These are hard days in which to find the peace we seek. According to tradition, we are supposed to unplug to our devices and plug in to…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootMarch 26, 2020 I was honestly puzzled about what I was going to write about today. Like you, I am reading the news for simple facts so I can make informed and correct decisions. That takes quite a bit of time. And, often,…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootMarch 25, 2020 In Theology class today, the discussion based on the book “The Tragedy Test” (which you are welcome to join us for if you need some intellectual stimulation and break from all this virus news) we somehow migrated to the famous…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Foot March 24, 2020 Many years ago, I read a book that has stayed with me as few other books have. It was written by Rabbi Richard Rubenstein at it is called “The Cunning of History.” Its thesis was simple: when governments see…

While Standing (6 Feet Apart) on One LegMarch 22, 2020 This is the end of week 2 of the pandemic. We have been told to stay at home, keep our children out of school, not go to work, and so forth. Trying out new technology has had it challenges but…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One FootTorah for a Viral EpidemicMarch 21 – Shabbat 2 in Lockdown In the past couple of weeks we have been learning a lot and not just about the virus and the governments’ responses or even about the economic impact. We have also been…

Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Leg Torah for Dealing with a Virus 3/19/2020 In the past couple of days, I have been reading so much that I have forgotten what I read. That’s not usually an problem but when I cut and paste a note without attribution, that is…

While Standing (Six Feet Apart) on One Leg: A Torah for a Virus: 3/18/2020 All trying times give rise to some insightful humor. During the Middle Ages in the time of the bubonic plaque, Jews were suspected of creating the disease and attacked because relatively few Jews got sick. One…

While Standing (6 Feet Apart) on One Foot A Torah for a Virus The story of Moses, Miriam and God has an interesting episode in the Book of Numbers. Miriam and Aaron, Moses’ brother and sister didn’t like that Moses had married a Cushite woman – a black, probably African,…

Moses’ invitation to ’cause people to come together’ is not so much a command to simply bring a big crowd to one spot. Rather it is, literally God saying to Moses, ‘Give these people a cause….and here is the cause. Build something constructive together and make that thing holy

Amalek is Us?  Only if we let it! Rabbi Cy Stanway The holiday of Purim is beckoned with a Torah portion in which the main commandment is, “Remember what the Amalekites did to you along your way from Egypt, how they met you on your journey when you were tired…

The spoken word can be immensely powerful. Our tradition rests on this awareness. Torah was spoken at Sinai and we speak of the ‘oral traditions’ of Judaism. There is no Jewish knowledge or experience without speech. The sermon is an extension of that. Each sermon I create, whether it be…

I would like you to consider the following two real people, one who is familiar to you and one who probably is not, and whose education and accomplishments are totally different from one another but who share something in common. William Shockley The first comes from the world of electronics.…

When Carl Sagan died a couple of years ago, there were lots of stories about him that began to circulate. One of them is very telling. It is said that he kept a postcard near his shaving mirror. The message read: Dear Friend, just a line to let you know…

When we were youngsters, most of us probably had a pet of some kind. And sooner or later it died. Our parents did not want to be callous nor did they want to make us feel bad just because our goldfish passed on, so they allowed us to bury our…

The Associated Press ran a story some time ago of Andre-Francois Raffray. More than thirty years ago at the age of 47, he worked out a real estate deal with a certain Jeanne Calment, who at that time was 90 years old. He would pay her $500 each month until…

How many of you here this evening remember your first calculator? When you got it, didn’t you think that it was the world just couldn’t get any better? I remember my family’s first calculator. It was a five function Texas Instruments machine with red numbers, nothing quite as sophisticated as…

In the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, there is a scene where Robin comes to a youth taking aim at the archery target and asks him, “Can you shoot amid distractions?” And just before the boy releases the string, Robin pokes his ear with the feathers of an arrow. The…

There is a little story about an American Indian who had a phenomenal memory. He had the amazing ability to recall everything he had done in his long life down to the most minute detail. On the Indian’s one hundredth birthday, he was interviewed by a newspaper reporter. The reporter…

Imagine, if you will, what life would be like without images. We have images for everything. We imagine what our children will be like when they grow up. We imagine what their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs will be like in a few years. We try to see ourselves in different…

If you were to think of the worst day of your life, what would it be?  There are so many different answers and so many different possible ways of having a terrible experience that the constellation of tzoris is as wide as the world is broad.  In fact, the well of pain…

Unless you follow the Nobel Prize, you may not have heard of Mairead Corrigan.  She was a shorthand typist and secretary in Belfast, Northern Ireland. But she wasn’t typing on the afternoon of August 10, 1976. Instead, she and her sister and her three children, hopped on bicycles and went…

There is a very funny e-mail that floats around that almost every rabbi must get at one time or another. It is a small collection of children’s answers to questions that are posed in religious school. For instance, one said that Noah’s wife was “Joan of Arc.” When asked about…

I am a coffee fanatic. I am also a Judaism fanatic. So imagine my joy when I was able to tie in a coffee story to Jewish story. What am I talking about? Let me explain. The word on the street is that Starbucks will soon begin selling instant coffee,…

As you know, it is almost Springtime and Springtime always means planting and  gardening and getting down and dirty in the soil and pray that what grows out  of the ground somewhat resembles the seeds you put into the ground! Now, as I  was getting ready for planting this season…

The profoundly horrific events of Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life synagogue this past Shabbat has given us all pause to consider what it means to be Jewish in America.  There are the statistics that show quite clearly how contemporary American society finds it all too easy to attack Jews.…