Build The Bridge Over Troubled Water
There's an old saying that a Rabbi gives but one sermon his entire career. I'm not sure I agree, but I understand why this saying exists. It's an understanding that while subjects and topics may change, certain ideas and values find themselves expressed on a regular basis. As I think about the thousands of sermons, bulletin articles, Shabbat messages and other communications over the course of my career, this is certainly rings true for me. And one of those values is the importance of reconciliation, of making up, of the need to fix important relationships that for whatever reason have gone awry. Throughout my career, I have seen tensions between parents and children, among sisters and brothers, and between dear friends lead to bitterness and estrangement. I have officiated at too many funerals, and attended too many shiva houses where the grief was compounded by failure to either seek forgiveness, extend forgiveness, or even attempt to talk and reconcile while there was st