3. LEKH-LEKHA

Rabbi Susan Grossman, 10/22/2004

Sermon for Lech Lecha 5765 (2004)

How to Go To War: Lessons from Father Abraham

By Rabbi Susan Grossman
Beth Shalom Congregation
Columbia, Maryland

The Book of Genesis is filled with firsts: the first couple, Adam and Eve, the first murder, Cain slaying Abel, the first Jews, Abraham and Sarah.

Our parsha this morning, Lecha Lecha, introduces us to another first, the first war ever waged in the world: the war of the four Kings of Shinar, Elasar, Elam and Goum who attacked the five kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman
Dear Friends,

I am enclosing an essay that Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, recently wrote about their experience helping Palestinians whose olive groves had been attacked by settlers. (In a s

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Between the Fires

We are the generation that stands
between the fires:
Behind us the flame and smoke
that rose from Auschwitz and Hiroshima;
and from the burning Amazon;
Before us the nightmare of a Flood of Fire,
The flame and smoke that could consume all earth.

It is our task to make from fire not an all-consuming blaze
But the light in which we see each other fully.
All of us different, All of us bearing
One Spark.
We light these fires to see more clearly
That the earth and all who live as part of it
Are not for burning.
We light these fires to see more clearly