Lessons From the Megillah - A Purim Prayer for the CO State House of Representatives

Our God and the God of all people,

This past Tuesday, Jews around the world celebrated the Jewish festival of Purim.  We read the Book of Esther – an ancient story of oppression, bravery, and vindication.  In synagogues around the world – and in bomb shelters in Israel, Jews dressed up in costumes, lost their inhibitions, and forgot about the problems that confronted us.

On Purim, we put on our masks and, for a few hours, take on the personas of our heroes and villains, our fantasies and our fears.

The book of Esther is the only book in the Hebrew Scripture where You are never mentioned by name – but Your presence is everywhere.  We find you in the bravery of Esther and Mordechai, who stood up for their faith – even in the face of death.  We find You in the Courage of Queen Vashti, who refused to allow herself to be taken advantage of and harassed by her boorish King.  We see You in the resiliency of the people who, in the shadow of evil cast by the wicked Haman, stood firm in their determination and strength.

God – even when Your name is absent you are present.

Even when we cry out in frustration, and disbelief we look to You for strength. In the Jewish Calendar, Purim falls about 6 months before the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur – a day of reflection and repentance – of fasting and intense prayer.

Our ancient Rabbis taught that there is a direct connection to the silliness of Purim and the somber tones of the Day of Atonement.

·      On Purim, we put on our masks.  On Yom Kippur we remove them.

·      On Purim, we laugh at ourselves – on Yom Kippur we cry tears of remorse.

In many ways, this holy chamber is also a reminder of the gap between these two festivals – between the sacred and the profane.  In this place, we confront the realities of our people.  We debate life and death issues that shape our State of Colorado and both reflect and set a standard for our national discourse. Help us to not take ourselves too seriously, God.  Help us to see the good in one another – in the sharing of ideas and the sacred arguments that must necessarily occur in the messy process of Governance

Bless these legislators, aides, lobbyists, clerks and staff - all who serve on a daily basis. Give them the strength of Esther and the wisdom of Mordechai to cut through the confusion and forge a path of prayerful leadership. As we remember a day of frivolity, may the humanity and holiness with which we all have been blessed become a pathway to reconciliation and respect.

AMEN

A Valentines Prayer for the Colorado House of Representatives

Our God and God of all people.

We know you by many names:

God of mercy, God of Justice, God of Salvation, God of all Humanity 

But this morning – let us call you God of Love…..

Today is February 12^th. In 2 days we will be celebrating Valentine’s day. 

Some here today – the more cynical among us - might think that a day set aside to focus on love is a ploy to sell chocolate and flowers. And they may be right. After all, shouldn’t we show our love every day? Shouldn’t we be grateful for the laughter and the tears, the kisses and caresses, the support and joy, the passion and the playfulness we share that makes each day seem brighter than the one before? The love that we give and receive makes us better human beings…….

But we aren’t always aware, are we? We are forgetful. We are creatures of habit. We take the people around us for granted and we expect them to love us nonetheless. And the crazy thing about it is that they do. Most of the time….

Dear God,

Our diverse traditions teach us that Your essence is love. You love us –otherwise why would you tolerate us? 

If You did not love us, how would you be able to stand idly by while we diminish Your image by despoiling your beautiful world?

If You did not love us, how could You let us live when we ignore the suffering or violence in our streets? 

If You did not love us, you would not have given us a conscience that wakes us from our slumber and forces us to realize our weakness, our frailty, our greed and our hubris.

Help us to love You  - O God of Love. Help us to love one another – so much so that we might rise above the our differences and focus on what unites us.

Help us to live so that we see that our very ability to love is a gift.

Bless these legislators O God. Bless all who labor for the sake of our beautiful state of Colorado. Help them to love one another. Help them to love their compassion and their quarrels. Help them to love the differences and the moments of clarity that occur when they do Your sacred work and help to perfect our world.

At this season of Valentines day – may we all find ways to rejoice in the love that makes our lives complete. 

It takes time to love – it takes patience. Sometimes it even takes chocolate and flowers.

But sometimes, our love makes Your love a reality.

May it be so today.  AMEN

Opening Prayer for the CO House of Representatives - January 29, 2026

 Our God and God of all people: 

 

We come to you this morning from different faith traditions.  As we celebrate the splendor and potential of our great State of Colorado, we acknowledge the fact that you reveal many truths – it is our task to hear and heed them. 

 

Merciful Creator, guide these Legislators as they go about their sacred work. May any conflicts that arise in the course of deliberation be seen as a reflection of the diversity with which we have been blessed. 

 

Holy One of Blessing – help our leaders to see the good in one other – and let that goodness triumph over partisanship. 

  

In this time of cynicism and divisiveness, help these men and women to see the people who, all too often are unseen – the men, women and children living on the edge - for whom these deliberations may very well determine the difference between hope and despair. 

 

May this day bring out the best in these leaders who have been elected to labor on behalf of their constituents. 

 

Our God - we have seen You in the faces of faceless – eager to love and be loved 

 

We have heard you in moments of wonder – when men, women and children come together in mutual longing and the promise of a better tomorrow. 

 

On this day of deliberation, let us pray that our leaders and officials might find You within themselves.   

 

·                May they find You in their ability to hear one other – to respect one other – to do the sacred work of governing our State of Colorado. 

 

·                May they find You in satisfaction that comes from hard work and due deliberation. 

 

·                May they come to know You as they come to know each other – and respect the skills that each brings to the floor of debate. 

 

·                May their discussions give way to a higher sense of purpose and understanding – and along the way, may it elucidate and elevate the decisions that are to be made. 

 

We thank you for these men and women who serve our great state of Colorado – the legislators, clerks, officers, and all who serve in the chamber.  Guide their deliberations with purpose and an awareness of the sacred. 

 

And let us say,  

 

AMEN 

Opening Prayer for the CO House of Representatives at the Beginning of a New Session - January 22, 2026

This is the 14th year that I  have been delivering opening prayers at the Colorado House of Representatives every Thursday.  Here is today's prayer: 

Our God and God of All People:

God of the Right and God of the Left;

God of the Haves and God of the Have-Nots;

God of Migrant and God of the Citizen;

God of those who have no God:

Merciful Creator, as we begin this new session of deliberation we pray for wisdom. We pray for understanding. We pray to tear down walls of divisiveness that prevent us from listening to and seeing one another – from engaging in healthy and honest debate.

This morning we seek meaning and purpose. 

Let Partisanship never get in the way of participation.

May our ears listen, and our hearts be moved as we labor for the continued vitality and vision of our Great State of Colorado.

On this day of deliberation, help us to remember that all of us – regardless of how we pray orif we pray at all– are vessels of holiness. Help us to see the Divine implanted within each human being in this chamber, in this building, in this city:  

·      those who languish in the streets, and those who live in the lap of luxury.

·      Those who are the beneficiaries of beneficence and privilege

·      And those for whom every day is a struggle

·      Those fleeing from trauma and those living in triumph

·      Those who strive to make a difference, and those who succumb to defeatism and degradation of the other.

Let these legislators, staff, clerks, and all who devote countless hours on behalf of our community find ways to connect on a level that triumphs over the transactional and moves us towards transcendence.

Let us remember that all debate can and should be holy. Let us strive to see the dignity in all your creation,

And let us say,

AMEN

A. Reflection on History Repeating Itself. Rabbi Joe Black - November 30th, 2025

 On November 7, 1938, a distraught young
German-born Polish – Jewish expatriate named Herschel Feibel Grynszpan shot and killed Nazi German Diplomat, Ernst Von Rath in cold blood in his office in Paris, France.  Grynszpan had a troubled youth. He was known to have a violent temper. The reason for his brutal crime was supposedly in revenge for the Nazis’ decree stripping Polish Jews of their citizenship and the Gestapo’s rounding up and deporting  over 12,000 Polish Jews – including Herschel’s parents. 

Hitler used the murder of Von Rath as a pretext to attack the entire Jewish communities of Germany and Austria. On November 9^th, 1938, organized groups of Nazi thugs burned synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, and broke into the homes of Jewish residences and brutally arrested thousands of Jewish men throughout the Third Reich – sending them to newly-built concentration camps. This night, now known as Krystalnacht (the “Night of Broken Glass – because of the glass that littered the streets  following the pogrom), was the beginning of the Final Solution for European Jewry. In the days and weeks that followed, the rest of the world remained silent – giving Hitler a green light to carry out his horrific plans.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Grynszpan in the aftermath of the murderous attack on National Guard troops in Washington, DC by an Afghan national this past week. President Trump, in response to this horrific event has called for collective punishment for all Afghani asylum seekers and the curtailing of visas from all “Third World Countries.”  History has taught us that blaming entire groups of people in response to the act of individuals is a tool of authoritarian governmental control. This tragic event in our nation’s capital is being exploited to justify immoral, xenophobic and racist policies and further an agenda of intolerance and bigotry that must be called out and condemned. 

The world remained silent after Krystalnacht. We know what followed in its wake. Silence is complicity my friends. We cannot allow history to repeat itself.

 

My Final Sermon: Korach and Connecting Tissue

 

 

Korach and Connecting Tissue

Rabbi Joseph R. Black – Temple Emanuel

June 27, 2025

As you can tell by the sling that I am wearing,  I am dealing with the loss of the use of my left arm for quite a while. I’ve had to tell and retell the story of what happened many times, so here’s the Cliff Notes version:

• 2 weeks ago, I tore the tendons of my left bicep and then I had surgery following Ethan and Zahava’ s wedding.
• What my surgeon basically had to do - without being too graphic - was to take the connecting tissue – the torn tendons attached to my bicep that were separated and reattach them to the bone.
• I will be unable to use my left arm fully for a few months - and that also means that I can't play the guitar... which is hardest for me frankly.
• But I know that, with time , patience, and physical therapy, I will be good as new in  a few months.

In contemplating what I would say to you tonight on my last Erev Shabbat sermon as your Senior Rabbi -  I thought about the symbolism of the connecting tissue that was being repaired in my arm.

I couldn’t think of a more perfect metaphor…

In many ways, the past 43 years since I began the journey of becoming a rabbi has been all about making connections:

• between Judaism and individuals
• Between people – in families, in community
• between colleagues
• with communal and religious leaders,
• with Torah, tradition and history
• At moments of powerful joy and at moments of painful loss

In the last analysis, rabbis are like tendons. We bring people, text, tradition and time into focus for others. The sacred work that we do is akin to the connecting tissue that makes everything work in our community.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, just as the complexities of arm surgery - where there are multiple nerve endings, muscles, sinews and bones that need to be carefully and tenderly cared for - there are also multiple aspects of what it means to be connected to a community and to one another.

This past week, we held our collective breaths as Israel, Iran, and the United States got intertwined in this horrible war and came perilously close to a much wider conflict.  Most of us, I would wager, felt a powerful connection  to our brothers, sisters, family and friends in Israel.

We prayed and followed on our television sets, social media platforms, and listened to reports as we worried about our loved ones in Israel who were huddled in bomb shelters and safe rooms – those who lived there as citizens, those who were visiting and couldn’t get out.

And we also felt the pain of the innocent Palestinians and Iranians caught up in the crossfire of a deadly conflict.

Certainly, we were connected by our love of Israel and our concern about the existential threat that Israel has been facing since October 7^th, 2023.  Regardless of our feelings about the current government, or how the war in Gaza has played out, our hopes for the release of the remaining hostages and an end to this conflict unites us all.

And yet, Israel is no longer a universal connector for the Jewish people.  Increasingly, The Jewish State is becoming a difficult and divisive topic – a flash point that is causing painful rifts in our community.

As I think about how the world has changed since I entered rabbinical school 43 years ago in 1982, one of the key differences I see is how we relate to one another and the disturbing unravelling of much of the Metaphorical “connecting tissue” that has been a given in terms of how we see ourselves in relationship to one another and the world around us.

I am worried that we are facing a looming crisis in the American Jewish community as we watch so many values, assumptions, and behaviors that have kept us strong and united for generations begin to unravel.

The advent of the Internet, and so many other important technological advances have given us many wonderful gifts. The fact that so many people are attending this service - both in person and online is truly blessing!

But, these gifts have come at a price. We are becoming disconnected:

• from families
• from our faith
• from our values
• from Zionism
• from one another
• from the basic institutions that have kept us strong, and, ultimately,
• from God.

The role of the rabbi, of community leadership and the shared values upon which so much of our history has been based are all rapidly evolving as we navigate the rapid changes occurring around us.

Rabbis Sacks and Hyatt – and the entire congregation – are facing a very different world than the one in which I began my rabbinate. The centrality of the synagogue and the role of the rabbi as community leader is not the same as it once was. There are myriad options for Jewish life, connection and involvement. Some of these changes are positive.  Some have the potential to be destructive.

This week's Torah portion, Korach, could not be more prescient. It is all about challenges to leadership and continuity.  It tells the story of a rebellion against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. In numbers 16: 1-3, we find the following:

וַיִּקַּ֣ח קֹ֔רַח בֶּן־יִצְהָ֥ר בֶּן־קְהָ֖ת בֶּן־לֵוִ֑י וְדָתָ֨ן וַאֲבִירָ֜ם בְּנֵ֧י אֱלִיאָ֛ב וְא֥וֹן בֶּן־פֶּ֖לֶת בְּנֵ֥י רְאוּבֵֽן׃

Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, took himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—descendants of Reuben — to rise up against Moses, together with two hundred and fifty Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute. They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and יהוה is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above יהוה’s congregation?”

On the surface, his words are not all that blasphemous:  , “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and יהוה is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above יהוה’s congregation?”

After all we are all holy. And God is in our midst.

And yet, Korach and his followers were severely punished by God, and Moses's leadership was firmly cemented among the people.  Why?

·       Rashi:  commenting on the Hebrew word, וַיִּקַּ֣ח  (vayikach – “and he took” 

o   “He betook himself on one side with the view of separating himself from out of the community.

What was Korach’s crime?

He removed himself. He separated himself. He Set himself apart from the connecting tissue that bound all of the Israelites together.

And as I enter into this last Shabbat as your senior rabbi, I want to leave you with words of connection. Temple Emanuel is a remarkable and holy congregation. Under the inspired leadership of your new Sr. Rabbis and their team, I know that the tradition of excellence, caring, spiritual depth and commitment to the Jewish future that has always been central to our sacred community will not only continue on - but will shine brighter than ever.

Over the past several weeks, people have been asking me how I feel as I approach this new stage in my life. Am I excited? Nervous? Sad?  And the answer, of course, is Yes – all of the above. 

But of one thing I am absolutely certain: Temple Emanuel is at a vitally important crossroads.  We are in a time of radical change. We face multiple challenges as we address the upheaval taking place around us.  And I am thrilled that Rabbis Hyatt and Sacks and Steve Stark – your Senior Leadership team - as well as Steve Brodsky, Rabbi Margo and Cantor Lehrman – along with the rest of our incredible staff team and lay leadership – are exactly the right people to lead us – to strengthen the connecting tissue that binds us together and that stretches from Mr. Sinai to Denver.

I have loved being your rabbi – and I know that there will be more opportunities to be part of the “connecting tissue” that will continue to hold us all together In my new role as Rabbi Emeritus.  I will miss being part of the daily life of our congregation. But I am also looking forward to what comes next: music, travel, family time. While I won’t be here a lot for the first year – I will always be part of Temple Emanuel. I look forward to being a “Jew in the pew” with Sue…

My blessing at this holy moment is that we will continue to grow - in size, in spirit, in creative innovation, and in maintaining the tradition and magic that fills the spaces of this beautiful building, as well as the hearts and souls of all who are part of our holy community.

May we embrace and find ourselves intertwined within the connective tissue of Jewish life – and may we go and grow from Strength to Strength.

AMEN – Shabbat Shalom.

 

 

 

 

 

Broken Tablets - Invocation For the Colorado House of Representatives at the End of the Session

 

We all know the story: Moses ascends Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.  He descends and finds, to his horror, that in his absence, the people have built a Golden Calf.  Smashing the tablets in anger and disgust, he once again ascends God’s holy mountain.

Upon returning, Moses gently puts the second set of the Ten Commandments into the Ark of the Covenant. 

Throughout their forty years of wandering, the Israelites see that Ark and those Tablets wherever they travelled.

The rabbis of old asked a question:  What happened to the original, broken set of tablets?  Were they discarded?  Recycled? Abandoned?

One answer is that they were given an honored place inside the Ark next to the second pair that was whole. 

Why? 

So that the people could see them and realize that brokenness is as much a part of life as completeness.

Let us pray:

Dear God – As we prepare to end this year’s legislative session, we delight in our successes and despair over our incompleteness. We know that, despite all of the valiant efforts to mend, heal, repair and replace some of the chaos in our world, there still is brokenness around us: 

·       On the streets of our cities;

·       In the cries of children and parents who cannot care for them;

·       In our parched landscape that thirsts for moisture;

·       In schools where students thirst for knowledge;

·       In the eyes of the innocents;

·       In the lies of guilty

But let us not stop with mere perception – lest we build another Golden Calf of apathy and callousness.  We pray that our seeing and hearing might spur us to action.

May the pristine surroundings of this beautiful chamber not blind us to the incompleteness that awaits us once we end this session and leave these hallowed halls.

On this day of deliberation and as we approach the end of this legislative session, may these legislators be healers – recommitting themselves to repair the brokenness that propelled them to serve in the first place.

May we understand that we share in the pain of others - that we are all  connected by a chain of humanity that both defines our weakness – when we refuse to see, and shows us our strength when we reach out in solidarity.

May this day be a day of hope, of wholeness and of collaboration.  May all that is broken be healed – and may we heal ourselves as we try to heal others.

As we look to the future, may we find the beauty in our attempts to fix the brokenness in our state – and even within ourselves - Then shall we all be a blessing.

Amen