Posts by Cyril

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 concert promoter, and she got…

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 word for clown is lemach.…

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 my synagogue at the time…

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 created’ or, maybe, ‘when humans…

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 since last year is that…

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 and 1962.   436 South African…

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 whys of repentance, but also…

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 they would ultimately disappear.  It…

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 same words spoken by 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 when Stella’s phone dinged as…