Shabbat Sermon: Rib Eye with Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Last week, I went to the bank. The teller was quite friendly. He looked vaguely Middle Eastern and had an accent I couldn’t quite place. We were chatting about the weather and the start of summer as he looked up my account. And then, he asked as he was typing away, “so, what do you do for work?” I paused, looking at him.Should I tell him what I do? Is that safe? What if he hates me for being Jewish and sabotages my bank account… And then, I thought to myself, “what, are you crazy, Aliza?! There are how many thousands of Israelis literally fighting on the front lives, fighting for their lives and the safety and security of our beloved Eretz Yisrael and you’re going to shy away from simply disclosing your profession?!” I tried to put on a warm smile. “I’m a rabbi,” I said.

“Hmmm…” he said, as he typed away on his computer. Click, click, click. I heard the keyboard, but nothing else. My mind was racing, worrying, wondering what he thought of me. Suddenly he stopped and looked me in the eye. “Wait, that’s a steak!”

I burst out laughing. I could barely form my next sentence. “No,” I choked out, “that’s a rib eye. I’m a rabbi.” He furrowed his brow and handed me a piece of paper. “Write it down,” he said. I did. He took the paper thoughtfully and began typing away at his computer. “Oh,” he said after a while, “a spiritualleader for the Jewish people…”

What a crazy time. To think that I was nervous about sharing my work with a random teller at the bank. And yet, every week we are inundated with stories about people in similarly benign situations that quickly devolve into tragedy.

The attack on the Jewish community in Boulder this week hit me particularly hard. You must know that Boulder is the epicenter of hippie life in Colorado. It’s a crunchy granola college town at the base of the Rocky Mountains. It’s so progressive that you have to work hard to find dairy ice cream. You can get avocado ice cream, soy cream, hemp cream, rice cream, oat cream, but if you want ice cream with cow’s milk you practically have to go to a specialized store or milk your own cow. I grew up visiting the Pearl Street Mall every week. We would go to religious school and then have dinner on the grass right there, where the attack happened, in front of the courthouse. It always felt like the safest place.

How is it that in 2025, Jews are publicly torched in the middle of a hippie college town in broad daylight? How is that an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor finds the strength to go out with their community in solidarity with the hostages for the first time only to end up in the ER with severe burns over their body? How is it that caring members of our community in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s are now coping with life-altering injuries simply for the sin of being identifiably Jewish in public? How is this our new normal?