Tomorrow evening, as the sun sets, we will cross the threshold into Shavuot — z'man matan Torateinu, the season of the giving of our Torah. I find something serendipitous about gathering for our annual congregational meeting at this precise moment in the Jewish calendar. Annual meetings are their own kind of accounting, and to do this on the eve of our arrival at Sinai, on the night before we prepare to receive the Torah anew, is a beautiful confluence of events. Our journey this year has...

There's an old story about a Jewish boy from the Lower East Side who runs home bursting with excitement to tell his grandfather that Babe Ruth hit three home runs in a single game. The grandfather listens patiently. Then he asks: "Tell me — what this Babe Ruth did — is it good for the Jews?" Versions of this story in English date back at least to 1824. Winston Churchill gave it a boost in 1921, when he declared that a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be "good for the world, good for the...

In many ways, Pesah is a holiday obsessed with memory. The obligation to remember the Exodus from Egypt is the festival’s raison d’etre . Yet remembering the Exodus is already woven into every single day of Jewish life — into our morning prayers, into the Shabbat kiddush, into the rationale for how we treat workers and strangers and the vulnerable. We are commanded to remember it always. So why do we also need seven days of elaborate ritual on top of that? Why the seder with its intricate...