This week we read Parashat Vayetzei, which opens with Jacob fleeing from the wrath of his brother Esau, en route to finding safety in the home of his uncle. When the sun starts to set, he stops to rest for the night and has only a stone for a pillow. He has a dream about a ladder, with angels going up and down, and hears the voice of God. He wakes up and says “Truly, God is in this place, and I, I did not know it!”

Please click here to view all of Rabbi Ariana Silverman’s 5781 High Holiday sermons, along with messages from our Board Members and Executive Director.

In our 99 years of existence, the Downtown Synagogue has seen its share of great leaders. Read Dr. Martin Herman's forward in our Siddur and you'll learn about the founding Isaac Agree Society, the visionaries who moved the synagogue to its current location, and those who breathed new life into IADS in the 21st century. Now, as we traverse unprecedented times, we need all sorts of leaders to roll up their sleeves and help further our mission.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge us, people find themselves expressing the need to seek balance in this new way we are living our lives. As individuals, a community, and a nation, it wasn't necessarily easy to find balance before, and the challenges from the virus only increase the difficulty. We think about being "productive" while we are experiencing a historic time of a public health pandemic, along with deep racial pain, the accompanying social justice efforts for change, an economic crisis, loss and grief, and profound uncertainty. How do we prioritize our health - physical and emotional - and the need for rest and relaxation?

What Does Black Lives Matter mean to me? My father was born in Hope, Arkansas. A place my father would never take me to visit, no matter how much I begged and plead with him to take me with him when he returned to the south. It would be only when my grandfather passed away that my father would take his children to return to the south for his father's funeral. Many years later, I would understand why he didn't want his children to visit the south.

BLACK LIVES MATTER? Black Lives Matter.

As I allow my eyes to gaze through the complicated lens that is the history of Blacks in America, one question that always seems to wrestle itself to the surface of my mind is, "Why did it take so much and why did it take so long to abolish something that any "decent" human being could easily see was horrifically wrong?"