Beshallah: Natural Phenomena and Divine Purpose  

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is on January 27, 2026. We repost this sermon by Rabbi Marc D. Angel, originally delivered on July 26, 2014 at Congregation Ezra Bessaroth in Seattle, Washington, when the community marked the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from the islands of Rhodes and Cos, nearly all of whom were murdered in Auschwitz.

This week’s Torah reading includes the “shirat hayam,” the song sung by Moses and the people of Israel after they miraculously crossed the Sea of Reeds. The Torah scroll presents the song in an unusual formation. Instead of the words following one another in order, the words of the song are interspersed with blank spaces. This format suggests a deeper lesson about life itself.

Even before the covid pandemic, some had the feeling that "large synagogues" were facing serious problems. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein wrote an important article highlighting the importance of large synagogues. Looking beyond the pandemic era, we need to think carefully about our synagogues...and our community as a whole.

The spring learning semester with Rabbi Hayyim Angel is just getting started!  

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —Albert Einstein “Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometric theories of structures or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture—literally a vision in the minds of those who built them.” —Historian Eugene Ferguson