Sermons

By Herschel Allerhand, typed by Mary Ann Easley, edited by Elizabeth Coffin

Shavuot is the second of the pilgrimage holidays (falling between Passover and Succot).

By Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor

There are so many interesting challenges when considering the festival of Chanukah – the first is obvious: how do we spell it? 

By Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor

Ed Paine, Ed Pease, Mike Scarpiello wrote a song in 1977, made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1982 “music speaks louder than words, it’s the only thing the whole world listens to, music speaks louder than words, when you sing people understand”

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Yom Kippur 5782 Congregation Shirat HaYam, Nantucket The oldest hatred rears its ugly head again.  How I wish there could be a High Holiday season during which the topic of antisemitism need not be addressed.  We don’t live in that world yet and I wonder if we ever

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Kol Nidre 5782 Congregation Shirat HaYam, Nantucket I am almost always behind the eight ball. Behind the eight ball means placed in a difficult situation from which one is unlikely to escape. The idiom behind the eight ball was first printed in American newspaper stories in the 1920s and was derived

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Rosh Hashana 5782 Congregation Shirat HaYam, Nantucket Imagine if you will – I know that this might be difficult –but try:  Amidst a great democracy, once opposing views have become poisoned.  Instead of reasonable people approaching problems from differing points of view, the atmosphere has become so polarized

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Erev Rosh Hashana, 5782 Congregation Shirat HaYam, Nantucket On March 12, 2020, I drove to Tarrytown, New York, to meet up with some friends who were giving a concert at the Tarrytown Music Hall.  They had been on tour for the past several weeks and expected to continue

Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor As we find ourselves almost a year since the initial shut-down precipitated by Covid-19, it is interesting that we have lived a full Jewish year in that time.  I wrote last year’s thoughts on Purim just days before the actual shut-down of our country.  Many of the things that I wrote

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Take a minute and imagine the scene: The Children of Israel, after a forty-year journey through the desert, are poised to enter the Promised Land. They are arrayed awaiting the instructions on how to live and what to expect. Moses, their leader for the entire journey, begins his

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor No fewer than 36 times in the Hebrew Bible are we exhorted to pay attention to the treatment of the stranger because “you know the feelings of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Ex. 23:9) We Jews have always prided ourselves on being

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Brettton-Granatoor For the past forty years, I have read this same Torah portion on the first day of Rosh HaShana (in most traditional shuls, it is read on the 2nd day, but the Reform movement a century ago moved it to the first day – that’s another story).  Every

A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor While there may be people sitting in the congregation this evening, the majority of you are sitting in your homes, hopefully in a comfortable place, with a desktop, or laptop or tablet or phone to stream High Holy Day services.  A year ago, this would have been unthinkable. 

by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Jewish life is the life of the mind – study is the very core of our continued existence since Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai founded the first Academy after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE.  Jewish life is the life of the spirit – as study should lead

Yes, this night is different from all other nights. And that will probably be true for the immediate future. How do we deal with it? Jewish tradition has some suggestions. The story that is central to Passover and consumes the first part of the Haggadah is the experience of our ancestors in Egypt. In Hebrew,

by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Purim is usually celebrated with great frivolity – in fact, one of the commandments of the day is that when celebrating, liquor should be enjoyed in copious quantities – so much so, one drinks “ad lo yadayah” (‘until you don’t know’…, the difference between Mordecai and Haman).  I would think

Chanukah 2019 by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor There are so many interesting challenges when considering the festival of Chanukah – the first is obvious: how to we spell it?  As with all Jewish holidays and concepts, the language of our heritage is Hebrew – so the name of the holiday is actually: חנוכה.  The word

Yom Kippur 5780 A Sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Why are you here? What made you decide to spend this day in this place? You could be on the golf course, on your boat, at work, at home, shopping, on the beach, cleaning your closets….  You had a choice.  What drew you here?  Are

Kol Nidre 5780 A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Last December, in an effort to support our daughter’s desire to take up Pilades, my beloved Marianne offered to go with Samantha.  Soon after they decided to add Yoga into the mix and very soon, I was more often than not alone at home with

Rosh HaShana 5780 A sermon by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor As I was minding my own business last week, reading through updates on my FaceBook, I got a signal that I received an instant message.  The message was sent to me by an old friend from my Jewish Youth Group days in the beginning of the

Erev Rosh HaShana 5780 Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor As a student at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, I was offered the most sage advice ever by one of my professors.  It was such an important piece of advice that it was shared with generations of rabbis that came from the Cincinnati campus, the New

Hanukkah Sermon 2018 Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor Please click below to hear the sermon:      

Yom Kippur Morning 5779 Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor My dear friend of three decades, Rabbi Harold Robinson the retired rabbi of Hyannis for many years, who is also a retired Admiral in the US Navy and was deputy head of the Chaplain Corps for the Navy and the Marines, visited our congregation several weeks ago,

Kol Nidre 5779 Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor When I was a kid, the newspaper would be delivered to the door of our apartment in the late afternoon.  I vividly remember, grabbing it and lying on my belly in the carpeted foyer (pronounced with correct Yonkers accent) and reading – just reading.  It didn’t take long

Rosh HaShanah 5779 Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor The story of humanity begins with a singular human couple  – Adam (Adom from the earth) and Eve (Hava – life).  The rabbis describe Adam’s creation as the gathering of earth from the four corners of the world: white, black, yellow and red soils – so that no

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5779 Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor My beloved wife, Marianne, has said repeatedly, that my sense of direction is so bad, that I would get lost even if I had a compass and a boy-scout with me. She is correct.  Drop me anywhere in the world and I am hopelessly lost.  So when