Rabbi Steven Abraham

This week, I spent the afternoon with one of the wisest members of our community. She’s in her mid-80s now—sharp, gracious, calm—and the kind of mature that can only come from living through decades of both beauty and heartbreak. Not wise in the performative sense. Not the kind of person who dominates a room with her opinion. But wise in the way that truly matters: unflappable, rooted, generous with silence. I’m not sure I can adequately put into words how blessed I felt after sitting with … [Read more...]

I understand the hesitation. Truly, I do. Synagogue can feel like walking into a play mid-scene, in a language you don’t fully understand. The melodies unfamiliar, the choreography opaque, the mood shifting from solemnity to joy without warning. Maybe you walked in once and no one said hello. Maybe the sermon didn’t speak to you. Maybe you left wondering what you were supposed to feel—and felt nothing at all. Or maybe, like so many others, your experience with shul was transactional. A few … [Read more...]

As the Midrash teaches, we all stood at Sinai, but each of us heard something different. Revelation, in this telling, wasn’t broadcast in a single voice. It reverberated across a multitude of hearts and minds, each person receiving the Torah in the frequency of their own soul. Some heard obligation. Others heard love. Some felt fear. Others, awe. But all of us heard something. And all of us stood. This idea has always struck me as liberating—a framework for Jewish pluralism that honors … [Read more...]

“I lift my eyes to the mountains—from where will my help come?” The opening verse of Psalm 121 has long resonated as a poetic expression of faith. But read in the aftermath of collective trauma—after October 7, amidst war, antisemitism, and a pervasive sense of moral abandonment—it carries a different, more haunting tone. What once sounded like rhetorical flourish now reads as an honest, anguished question. In a world so visibly fractured, where precisely is help supposed to come from? The … [Read more...]

There is a line. A line between passion and anger. Between urgency and aggression. Between pushing someone to be better—and pushing them away. And if we’re being honest, it’s not always obvious when we’ve crossed it. You can be self-aware, emotionally intelligent, and deeply well-intentioned—and still miss the off-ramp. That’s the danger of passion. It’s hot. It burns. It refuses to sit quietly. We tell ourselves it comes from love, conviction, or moral clarity—and often it does—but even … [Read more...]

Every few years, a new Jewish continuity initiative emerges—accompanied by strategic plans, donor campaigns, and the familiar chorus of communal anxiety. We wring our hands over declining synagogue attendance, increasing intermarriage rates, or the alienation of the next generation from the State of Israel. The concern is not unfounded. The data often tell a sobering story. But there is something hollow in the way we talk about continuity—as if it were a marketing challenge or a branding crisis, … [Read more...]

There’s a line buried in the Mishneh Torah that I cannot stop thinking about. Rambam writes in Deot 6:7 that when we rebuke someone—when we confront a fellow Jew about a sin, a mistake, a pattern of behavior—we must do it not out of anger, superiority, or frustration. We do it, he says, “to allow him to merit the life of the World to Come.” Not to win an argument.Not to get it off our chest.Not because we’re right. We do it because we care about their soul. That’s wild. Imagine … [Read more...]

There’s a line buried in the Mishneh Torah that I cannot stop thinking about. Rambam writes in Deot 6:7 that when we rebuke someone—when we confront a fellow Jew about a sin, a mistake, a pattern of behavior—we must do it not out of anger, superiority, or frustration. We do it, he says, “to allow him to merit the life of the World to Come.” Not to win an argument.Not to get it off our chest.Not because we’re right. We do it because we care about their soul. That’s wild. Imagine … [Read more...]

There’s a Hasidic story I return to often—because I need to. A student once asked the Rebbe, “Rebbe, why is it that every time I try to become a better person, I fail? I make promises before Rosh Hashanah, I take on something for Elul, I swear I’ll stop gossiping, or start being more present with my children—and then I find myself right back where I started.” The Rebbe smiled and said, “That’s exactly where you’re supposed to be. The work is not about being perfect. The work is about … [Read more...]

There's a quiet, countercultural lesson I keep having to learn-and relearn—as a rabbi, as a human being, and most of all as someone who loves people: Doing nothing is sometimes the most faithful, most courageous, most meaningful thing we can do. Not nothing in the apathetic sense. Not checking out, not turning away, not giving up. I'm talking about a conscious kind of not-doing. A sacred pause. A decision to not react immediately. A practice of holding space. Of resisting the very natural, … [Read more...]