Rabbi's Corner

July 11, 2025

I am so honored to join Temple Beth Or as your Intentional Interim Rabbi. Over the coming days, weeks, and year ahead, I look forward to getting to meet and know as many of you as possible: to listen to and learn your stories, to understand what is important to you, and to walk alongside you during this important year of reflection and transition.

This message also marks the beginning of a new pilot project for TBO: “Rabbi’s Corner.” Each Friday morning, in preparation for Shabbat, I’ll share a brief reflection, a lens through which we might view the week that has passed or prepare for the sacred time ahead. At times, these reflections will respond to events in the world around us. Other times, they may be drawn from the life of our congregation or from the greater community around us. What all the reflections share in common, no matter the topic, is that they are always grounded in Torah and Jewish tradition, our timeless sources of wisdom, resilience, and hope.

“How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.” (Numbers 24:5)

These words from this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Balak, are among the most beloved and recognizable in Jewish liturgy and were originally uttered by the most unlikely person in the most unusual manner: the non-Israelite prophet Balaam. Balaam was hired to curse the Israelites but ended up blessing them instead. A prophet does not say their own words, rather they express the words of God. Balaam, no matter how much King Balak insists, is unable to curse they Israelites, since they are God’s special people.

The words of “Ma Tovu” express a sense of wonder and reverence upon entering sacred community. The rabbis of old who chose the opening prayers of our morning worship, thought "Ma Tovu" to be the perfect expression of what we feel as we are about to join together as community in worship.

I, too, feel the words of “Ma Tovu” echo in my heart as I begin my year with you here at Temple Beth Or: “How beautiful is this tent—this congregation, this community.”

It is with deep gratitude and genuine excitement that I join you on our journey this year, in this sacred space. I am a second-generation Reform rabbi who grew up with the synagogue as my second home.

I join you with four decades of experience in the rabbinate, working with congregations both large and small. I’ve had congregational experience on both the micro and macro levels: serving in congregations and then for the broader Reform movement as the head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) in Canada, and simultaneously as the head of ARZA Canada (the Association of Reform Zionists). Most recently, I served a congregation in Orange County, California before deciding to return to the East Coast.

I am also an ardent Zionist. My love for Israel is both personal and profound, influenced early by my parents and nurtured over a lifetime of connection to our people, our Jewish homeland, and our sacred story. Equally central to my identity is a deep commitment to social justice, grounded in the enduring belief that our Jewish tradition calls us not only to care, but to act. These dual values, Zionism and social responsibility, are intertwined legacies I carry from my parents. I still hear my father’s voice teaching us: “The Talmud says that once your eye has seen or your ear has heard, you are obligated to respond. You cannot be an innocent bystander.” That principle has shaped my siblings and me (I am the oldest of six) in profound ways, guiding how we engage with the world to this very day.

You will hear some of my personal values resonate through my teaching, writing, and speaking. However, as an Intentional Interim Rabbi, our one-year time-period together is not meant to be a time to influence Temple Beth Or to try to change ideologies. (I thought it important to share something about myself with you to put things in context).

This year, will be a journey through a time of reflection, growth, and transition. An interim period is an opportunity, a sacred pause between chapters, the time between your beloved Rabbi Dinner’s lengthy 32-year tenure and the beginning of your new settled rabbi’s onboarding. We will assess who we have been, imagine who we wish to become, and prepare ourselves spiritually, emotionally, and structurally for what lies ahead. Together, we will:

• Celebrate your strengths as a sacred community
• Identify areas that are ready to evolve
• Clarify values and goals for the next chapter of congregational life with your settled rabbi
• Foster trust, transparency, and open-hearted dialogue

We do all of this while rooted in Jewish wisdom, guided by sacred text and tradition, and grounded in relationships.

Temple Beth Or is going through this time of transition while we are living in a moment of deep uncertainty and unrest. The world around us can feel chaotic, disjointed, and overwhelming. The synagogue has always been a shelter in the storm, a mikdash me’at, a small sanctuary where we gather to pray, to learn, to celebrate or grieve, to take action, and to find strength in one another.

In a time when the world urges us to turn inward, we will turn toward one another. We will create spaces of belonging, lift up voices that need to be heard, and remind each other that Judaism is not just a tradition of survival, it is a tradition of community, of learning, of hope, of justice, and of joy.

“Ma tovu” is not just a blessing. It is an invitation. An invitation to embark on a journey of discovery together to co-create a meaningful, intentional year of transition and transformation.

May it be a year of promise, hope, blessings and excitement about the future, a year of “wildly unimaginable blessings.”

Wildly Unimaginable Blessings- by Alden Solovy
Let us dream
Wildly unimaginable blessings…
Blessings so unexpected,
Blessings so beyond our hopes for this world,
Blessings so unbelievable in this era,
That their very existence
Uplifts our vision of creation,
Our relationships to each other,
And our yearning for life itself.

Let us dream
Wildly unimaginable blessings…
A complete healing of mind, body, and spirit,
A complete healing for all,
The end of suffering and strife,
The end of plague and disease,
When kindness flows from the river of love,
When goodness flows from the river of grace,
Awakened in the spirit of all beings,
When G-d’s light,
Radiating holiness,
Is seen by everyone.

Let us pray —
With all our hearts —
For wildly unimaginable blessings,
So that G-d will hear the call
To open the gates of the Garden,
Seeing that we haven’t waited,
That we’ve already begun to repair the world,
In testimony to our faith in life,
Our faith in each other,
And our faith in the Holy One,
Blessed be G-d’s Name.

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel

Worship With Us!

Join us for Rabbi Sobel's Welcome Service on Friday, July 11.  Pre-Neg begins at 6:15 PM.

Friday, July 11 | 7:00 PM  Shabbat Services
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Saturday, July 12  | 10:30 AM
Shabbat Services
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