Divrei Torah (and some lectures)
Want to hear what clergy are saying about God? Looking for sermon inspiration? Look no further! These incredible rabbis and cantors have beautiful words about God to help you along your journey.
Inviting God Back to the Garden
Rabbi Angela Buchdal | Yom Kippur 2015
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl explores how we can understand and connect with God not as a being, but as an experience of awe, love, presence, and sacred moments in our lives. Drawing from personal stories, Jewish tradition, and mystical teachings, she suggests that while rationality and science explain much, they cannot replace our yearning for meaning, transcendence, and connection. Ultimately, she invites us to return to God by recognizing divine presence in both the extraordinary and everyday, rekindling awe, and reopening the gates between heaven and earth.
How to Wrestle with God and Win
Rabbi Ed Feinstein | 2019 | starts at 3:07
Rabbi Ed Feinstein explains that doubting, questioning, and even arguing with God are essential parts of a meaningful faith. Using the story of Jacob, he shows how spiritual struggle leads to growth and a deeper, more honest relationship with the divine. Faith is not about having all the answers but about engaging fully in the search.
Does God Still Believe in Us?
Rabbi Miriam Hoffman| Rosh HaShanah 2025
Rabbi Miriam Hoffman draws on the midrash that God created 974 worlds before ours, and only stopped creating not because our world was less wicked, but because God sought true partnership with humanity. Tracing the divine experiments of Adam and Eve, Noah, and Abraham, she argues that God’s deepest desire is not obedience but relationship—one marked by questioning, learning, and co-creation. The High Holidays, she teaches, ask whether we are still worthy of that role: will we keep choosing justice, compassion, humility, and love in a world of injustice and moral complexity? Each day the world endures is a sign that God still believes in us; the question is whether we will believe in ourselves and recommit to the covenant.
Do We Forgive and Forget When it Comes to God?
Rabbi Marina Yergin| Yom Kippur 2015
Rabbi Yergin reflects on grieving the unexpected loss of her father while preparing for Rosh Hashanah and wrestling with feelings of abandonment by God. She openly shares her struggle with faith, asking whether we can or should forgive God when we feel let down. Through Jewish teachings on the three types of forgiveness—mechila (letting go), selicha (empathy), and kappara (atonement)—she explores the complexity of divine forgiveness and human pain.
Finding God in the Shadows
Rabbi Angela Buchdal | March 2016
Rabbi Buchdahl explores the idea that the darker, more challenging moments in life - its “shadows” - can provide profound spiritual depth and perspective. Challenges and uncertainties aren’t just obstacles - they're essential to developing spiritual depth. Rabbi Buchdahl invites us to “create a sanctuary” within those shadows, where pain and doubt don’t contradict faith but enhance it.
God, God, God, God, God: Speaking the Unspeakable
Rabbi Taron Tachman| Rosh HaShanah 2023
Rabbi Tachman explores the hesitation many Jews feel about talking openly about God and why those conversations matter. Prompted by Rabbi Jordie Gerson’s call for rabbis to speak more directly about God, the speaker examines the social, theological, and emotional reasons such discussions are often avoided. Drawing on personal experiences and the teachings of Rabbi Harold Kushner, the sermon encourages thoughtful, authentic engagement with questions of faith—not to find certainty, but to deepen connection with our purpose, our community, and the sacred.