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Convention Rabbinic Reflections

Korban, Olah, Minchah, Zevah Shleimim, Chataat: Welcome to Parashat Vayikra: CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person’s 2026 Convention Address

The 137th annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was held March 2026, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where 400 Reform rabbis gathered in person and online. Here, we share CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person’s address to the Conference, urging the rabbinate to balance fear with bravery and gratitude, in hopes for our redemption.

Watch the video, or read the address below.


For those keeping track, and fair enough if that’s just me, this is the first year in a while that P’kudei hasn’t been the Convention parashah. Here we are this year in Vayikra, surrounded by entrails and suet, the cutting up into sections, all the dashing and draining of blood, the flaying and pinching, the tearing without severing, the kidney and loins, the fat, the broadtail.

This pivot between the lofty and gloriously detailed tabernacle building of P’kudei and the gory and highly detailed viscera of the offerings in Vayikra is a strangely familiar dance. One day we’re exalted, planning the blueprint for the future, dreaming big with great excitement about what can be and how we’re going to get there with what bountiful resources, and the next day we’re knee deep in the muck.

Both of these modalities, the P’kudei moments and the Vayikra moments, are based on hard work, on getting the details just right, so that we can be in proper covenantal relationship with God and with our community. Different methodologies, shared goals. Much of what we aim to do at the CCAR is find ways to support rabbis through both of these modes, and everything in between, through the periods of big, beautiful possibilities, and the days of trudging through the mucky mess. 

As rabbis, we often teeter between these two poles of P’kudei and Vayikra, reminding ourselves even as we make our way through the mess that there is some greater purpose and goal.  Both the edifice building and the sacrifices of our yields are ultimately kinds of offerings—examples of the unique human ability to produce shelter, creativity, and sustenance, remarkable acts of human skill and ingenuity that build upon the raw material provided by God. All this work has a greater purpose, to weave us into a covenantal tapestry in which both humans and God have obligation toward one another.

What are offerings but the manifestations of our hopes and fears: Take this and make my days plentiful; accept this and may I merit beneficence; receive this on account of what I meant to do but didn’t, or what I did but wish I hadn’t, and may all be well with me. We make our offerings and we pray for good outcomes, for safety, for the banishment of our daily dread.

Though we are, of course, very far from the days of the Temple and the priesthood, and thankfully (says this vegetarian) no longer required to slaughter animals as part of our religious practice, in many ways offerings are still our work as rabbis. No matter what kind of rabbinic work you do, in one of the many forms of chaplaincy or counseling, in a school or summer camp or college campus, in a congregation or organization, in retirement, we all bring forms of offerings, and we all want to get it right. Our sermons, acts of service, pastoral care, teaching, fundraising, strategic planning, life cycle officiation—all of these are our rabbinic offerings regardless of where and how we serve. As with the biblical priests, our offerings are for the greater good of the community, meant to enable our communities to flourish and thrive.

Our portion this week speaks of not just the variety of offerings, but also the right ways to bring them. The rules are plentiful and specific: an unblemished male animal from the herd or the flock, or a bird of the air. We learn how to slaughter the animal, and what to do with it. The text exhibits angst about making sure we get the offerings right, and the level of detail conveys a deep sense of anxiety about getting it wrong. Offerings are instrumental for the proper health and functioning of the community. The stakes are high, but there is a path to repair. Make amends for your wrongdoing, and a way forward opens up. This rule-bound system allows for our flawed humanity and encourages us to try again.

There is delicate choreography involved in these offerings, choices about what can be brought, with a welcome sense of justice embedded in the allowance made for those without the means to bring the costliest offerings. And if it is to be a meal offering, the most modest of the offerings, it must be prepared with flour and oil, but without leavening and honey (Leviticus 2:11). As a baker, I find curious the requirement to leave out that which makes it rise, and that which makes it sweet.

Challah and babka, my baking go-tos, are basically two versions of the same thing, the result of the reaction of yeast, salt, flour, eggs, oil, and water. Probably like a lot of you, my challah and babka baking exploded with creativity during the Pandemic, resulting in all kinds of, if I may so, delicious things like scallion pancake challah and chocolate tahina babka. However, take away all those extras, and other than the addition of leavening and sweetness, challah and babka aren’t all that different from the meal offering being described in our parashah. You could perhaps not use eggs—the Shammai position to my Hillelian recipe—or substitute butter for oil. At the end of the day though, it’s all about the yeast and sweetener. Without the yeast and sugar, you’ve basically got matzah, our primal paradigmatic sustenance.

Our ancestors have a great time debating the significance of the leavening and honey. It’s date honey, opine Ibn Ezra and Rashbam. It’s the juice from ripe fruit, says Rashi. Either way, there are essentially two issues here: one is that the sugar in the honey can cause flour to become leavened (great to see the rabbis of old try to understand the essentials of baking), but also a concern with not sweetening the offering because that’s what idolators did.

Perhaps another issue—that just as leavening is a move toward culture and away from the primal essence of flour, oil, and water, sweetening also removes the offering from its essential essence. As Nechama Leibowitz writes, “…the sacrifices as such—the slaughtering, sprinkling of the blood and the offering up on the altar—have no other function than to portend a change of heart and the wish to draw closer to the Creator.” Basically, the leavening and the sweetener are distractions; they get in the way of a direct, unmediated relationship between our exposed, vulnerable soul and the divine.

Leavening puffs up our loaves, and it puffs us up; it distances us from that which is elemental in ourselves and thus creates distance between us and God at the very moment when, by engaging in offerings, we are trying to connect with God. The Talmud, in B’rachot 17a, goes so far as to posit that it is yeast in the dough that prevents us from doing God’s will, equating it with the evil inclination within each person. Leaven is a metaphor for the evil inclination, as Rabbi Alexandri said in his prayer: “It is our will to do Your will, but the leaven in the dough prevents it” (B’rachot 17a). It is not the leavening in and of itself that is evil, but that it inflates us, it distances us from our essential, raw self, and thus must be used in moderation, and only at certain time like on Shavuot. B’rachot 34a teaches:There are three things that are harmful in excess but are beneficial when used sparingly. The first is: Leavening in dough…

In just a few weeks, we’re going to be ridding ourselves of chameitz. Passover is our annual journey of cleansing, getting rid of that which distances us from our essential selves. Ridding ourselves of excess, leavening helps us turn back to our core mission. Leavening takes up room—remove the leavening, and we have more room for God, for one another, and for that which matters most.

We are living in a time of terrible fear and uncertainty. We have been through a lot in recent years, even in recent days, and I’m not going to list it all for you because you know it and live it. The empty chairs in this room that should have been filled with beloved colleagues who could not get here are a testament to some of what we are living with right now. There are real things to be afraid of, plenty to make us anxious and scared.

Fear is totally reasonable. There are those who wish to harm us, as we are painfully reminded again and again. We must acknowledge that reality and take the steps necessary to be as vigilant and prepared as possible. But we can’t lead from fear. The question for us as leaders is what we do with that fear. Because one of the companions of fear is anger, and another companion is self-righteousness. As rabbis we must recognize fear, our own fear and that of those around us. But we can’t nurture our fear like it is soeir, sourdough starter that must be tended and fed, we can’t let it become leavened and rise to fill all the hollow spaces. Our job is to inspire hope and thereby lead with and toward courage.

Are the lives of those of us who live in North America in danger? Is Jewish life as we know it coming to end in North America? Is democracy both here and in Israel in its death throes? Is Israel under existential threat like never before? Does the ever-growing violence perpetrated by Jews against Palestinians on the West Bank portend a future of government sanctioned Jewish supremacy? Is this American and Israeli war against Iran justified and necessary? Perhaps, and perhaps not. We have predictions and theories and desired outcomes about all of these things, but we don’t yet know. I don’t want to minimize the danger of what we are experiencing, but our job as rabbis is not to be purveyors of fear. Our job as rabbis is not to encourage people to become either immobilized by fear or to give into anger-fueled actions and reactions, but rather to inspire, to help people find comfort and the courage to face the future with hope and creativity, and to take action.

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Convention Rabbinic Reflections

‘For This Have We Come to the Rabbinate’: CCAR President Rabbi David Lyon’s 2026 CCAR Rabbinic Convention Address

The 137th annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was held in March 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, where over 400 Reform rabbis gathered in person and online. Here, we share CCAR President Rabbi David Lyon’s moving address acknowledging the challenges of being a rabbi in this moment and a reminder to counter hate with courage and Jewish joy.

Only two weeks ago, we celebrated Purim. In ancient times, Persia returned the Jews to Judah; today, Jews seek to return Persians to Iran. It’s a topsy-turvy world sometimes. It’s not always ours to understand, but it’s always ours to make meaning. If only it didn’t take so long to return to our ancestral home in Israel, to repay the favor to Persia, or to anticipate peace after war in the Middle East. Apparently, it’s also going to be a while before Jewish institutions and the people who serve them can stop worrying and spending for security.

Our work, though, is a marathon, not a sprint, another sports metaphor that had to be explained to me by my colleague, Rabbi Adrienne Scott, who runs. I don’t run, unless I’m being chased. Esther, of course, was chased, but Mordechai had to remind her, in a horrible moment, that she had come to royalty “for a moment such as this.”

But, really? Under our circumstances, who hasn’t asked, “Have we come into the rabbinate for THIS?” Or maybe someone asked us, “For this YOU became a rabbi?” It’s rarely easy. So let’s be clear, today: For this and more WE were created.

Our learning begins in Vayikra where the Israelites and their priests managed their own sacred relationships with God through sacrifice. First among them, Moses brought different kinds of offerings. Referring to Psalm 18:26ff, Rabbi Nehemiah explains in Vayikra Rabbah: 

When Moses approached God with special courtesy, God treated him with special courtesy; when he came to God with frankness, God answered him with frankness; when he approached God with lack of directness, God countered him with lack of directness; when he sought a clear statement regarding his affairs, God made clear his affairs for him. (Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 11:5) 

Without a Temple to offer sacrifices, the rabbis linked Moses’s relationship with God to the offerings of his lips and the intentions he brought with them. Then they linked Moses to themselves, and they taught that, with no Temple standing in Jerusalem, our verbal gifts would replace the sacrifices. The rabbis thus equated the power of their own prayers with the power of the best-intentioned sacrificial offerings. We, too, hope that our prayers and intentions will be worthy before God. 

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CCAR Convention Rabbinic Reflections

Hope, Clarity, and Purpose: CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person’s 2025 Convention Address

The 136th annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was held March 23-26, 2025, in downtown Chicago, where over 450 Reform rabbis gathered in person and online. Here, we share CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person’s moving address acknowledging the incredible work of Reform rabbis, the blessing of leading the Jewish people, and the importance of finding clarity and purpose in these challenging times.

Watch the video, or read the address below.

Welcome to the first ever CCAR Asefah! After decades of calling this the CCAR Business Session, this is now the Asefah. Why? Because we listened to colleagues, who told us that the term “business session” didn’t properly convey what we did here. As The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon reminds us, the root asaf is related to gathering, to being gathered, and to harvesting. And indeed, more than just “business,” this session is our annual gathering—the annual harvesting of the work of the CCAR. 

This week’s parashah, P’kudei, coincidentally the same Convention parashah as last year’s, speaks about the whole and the parts. There is the mishkan, that miraculous construction of artistry and faith, made up so very many parts. And there are the sacred vestments, also made up of different parts: the breastpiece with its stones representing the totality of Israel, the rings of gold, and the chains, and the cords, and the ephod.

The CCAR too is made up of the whole and parts. I’ve found it interesting to hear people talk about the CCAR as some abstract, amorphous organism that operates on its own free will. Actually, the CCAR is you, and me, the board, and the amazing staff we have in this room and elsewhere. We are all part of how and why the CCAR operates. You, the members, give us, the staff, our purpose and reason to exist, and I hope that the staff and I give you tools and resources to achieve your purpose, along with the chevrah and sense of community that strengthens you to do your sacred work. We, together, are the CCAR.

Of course the work of the CCAR is not just the staff, but also the board, and all the many, many volunteers who give their time and ideas to keep all the work going, and all of you who support the work of the CCAR in so many, many ways. Thank you to all the chairs and members, too many to mention, and forgive me for not mentioning every name, or we’d be here all day—thank you to all of you who roll up your sleeves and do the work of our committees and task forces and working groups, thank you to all who give what you can of your resources, your time, your ideas—you are the engine that drives the CCAR. Thank you to the board, both the outgoing and the incoming, whose level of commitment and partnership is so extraordinarily high.

And two exceptional people. Rabbi Erica Asch: I don’t think she realized what she was getting into when she became president, but wow did she jump in with both feet. I am going to miss you so much, but luckily you’re still on the board for two more years as our immediate past president. In these two years of her presidency, we have been through so much together—some of the usual work of the board, and some highly unusual. In this time, Rabbi Erica has become a trusted friend and advisor. I have learned so much from her and have tremendous admiration for how she approaches problem-solving and thinks through the hard stuff with clarity and integrity. Thank you, thank you.

And Rabbi David Lyon, I’m so very excited to be working closely with you the next two years. There’s a lot to do, and I am glad that we’ll be doing it together. If these last few weeks, even these last few days, are any indication, I know we’re going to learn a lot together, do important work for the CCAR, challenge each other in all the best ways, and have fun doing it. Thank you for stepping up, and thanks in advance for all the ways I’m going to grow under your leadership, and the CCAR is going to grow.

Like the biblical mishkan, the CCAR is complex, and multifaceted, made of many parts, and many people each playing their important part, each bringing the best that is in them to make a strong and beautiful whole. So it is for each beautiful element of the mishkan and of the sacred vestments—each one of those dazzling fabrics and stones serves a purpose and matters—and so it is for us as rabbis. What you do matters, and I want to thank you for all the ways you carry your individual leadership. Teaching Torah, leading prayer, bringing comfort, opening doors, moving chairs, raising money, writing, protesting, managing budgets, committee work, coalition building—the elevated and the quotidian—it is not all glamorous, but it is important and necessary. In the words of Marge Piercy [i]:

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

Thank you for everything you do as rabbis, in all the ways you do it, the work of mala and mata.

There is a flip side though to all of that breathtaking beauty of the mishkan and the priestly garments described in this parashah. Those vestments must have been quite a load to bear. I’m imagining the weight of the layers of linen, the gold, and all the stones, the ruby and the emerald and the turquoise, all of those bright and beautiful but substantial stones on the priests’ shoulders and backs, weighing them down with responsibility and mission.

As the inheritors of these communal leadership roles, we continue to carry the load of these sacred garments. It has been quite a few years of extremely heavy burdens on us. We thought things were challenging before. And suddenly the landscape is even tougher.

If these vestments of leadership imbue us with strength and power, to what end? Do these vestments transmit awe and authority, or might they sometimes also become a form of constraints, keeping us always conscious of the role we play vis-à-vis those we serve? These vestments may identify us as the bearer of special status and power, but they can also be bindings that restrict us.  

In an uncertain and ever-roiling world, it’s so important that we articulate our own clarity of purpose. Where do we remain quiet for the sake of sh’lom bayit within our community, or even within our homes, and where do we speak out? On what are we willing to take a risk? Where do the stakes feel so high that we must speak out, even if there are consequences, and where are stakes so high that we cannot speak out? 

We rabbis are teachers, preachers, healers, pastors, thought leaders, organizational leaders, strategists, innovators, challengers of the status quo. The responsibility of leadership that we carry can be a burden, but it doesn’t have to be so heavy if we can identify our mission. That sense of purpose can guide us and give us strength, remind us where we’re trying to go and why.

Identifying a personal mission is a process of discernment that can be ongoing, but today, I want to share four elements of my mission at this moment with you.

First, I am here to serve you: to hear your needs and your ideas, to think about what you need today, and envision what you might need tomorrow. This often means pivoting as needs change—and, it does not always mean saying yes, but it does mean listening and considering.

What it does mean is hearing you, helping you out with challenges, me or others on the CCAR staff. It has meant figuring out immediate needs in times of natural disasters, global pandemics, and wars. It means, just as some examples, offering webinars on antisemitism, offering Shekels, our fundraising seminar, and a multi-session course on facilitating difficult conversations. It means starting a series for rabbis going into retirement or a support group for those coping with despair. It has meant working with our partner organizations to engage in the work we should be doing together—the URJ, the ACC, ARJE, and more. It means taking a group of rabbis to Israel every year to connect with our MARAM colleagues and to stay current with the reality on the ground.

Second, I am here to serve the future of the rabbinate. How can I be strategic about what we will need tomorrow? With whom should I be in conversation? What do we need to put in place today in order to be ready for tomorrow? How can we think practically to prepare for tomorrow, and how can we dream about what might be possible? That means policy changes in the office of career services, like a new policy requiring search committees to engage in anti-bias training, or in our admissions policy as we expand our CCAR ranks to include more rabbis ordained from other seminaries—many of whom are already serving Reform congregations—and creating a group to help with emeritus/successor challenges. It means working with the ACC to create the Small Congregation Clergy Collab to serve small congregations no longer being served by students, and working with the URJ to reimagine the Gold Book. It means expanding our Mishkan T’filah family of offerings to include a new Friday night service booklet and a Spanish supplementary version, both currently in the works. And it means going big and creating the Torah commentary for the 21st century, a project that is creative and generative and will be an incredible gift for the future. 

Third, it means reconciling with our past in order to pave the way for a better tomorrow. That has meant creating an ethics department, accepting accountability for the past, engaging in the difficult, ongoing work on our ethics code and system, and continuing to update our system. It means recognizing the pain of our history in regard to the acceptance and inclusion of LGBTQ+ colleagues. It means being committed to apologizing for the past while also believing in an organization and a rabbinate that can continually learn and do better.

And ultimately, fourth, is about mustering courage and heeding the still, small voice within, pushing me to speak out for justice and our values. There is much in this broken world of ours that calls to me. Of those, I must discern, which I will speak out on publicly. Part of this role is knowing when to be quiet. But part of it is also deciding when to speak out.

I wasn’t always so concerned about the peril of speaking out, but today there can be real risks in speaking out—personally, professionally, organizationally. And, I may disappoint you, or I may anger you—either because we did speak out on something or because we did not. That is going to happen. We cannot do everything, say everything, respond to everything, nor should we.

In these challenging days I am buoyed by being in conversations with other faith groups and alliances, united in our concerns for the future of shared ideals and values. (Sidebar note: I want to apologize to the Canadians here—well, I want to apologize to you regardless, but right now this is going to sound very American-centric. And to the Israelis and Europeans, again, apologies.)

The February 2025 lawsuit that we joined with twenty-six other faith groups against the Department of Homeland Security to protect the fundamental American principle of religious freedom and the sanctity of our places of worship, along with our partners from URJ and the Conservative and Reconstructionist Movements, and also many Christian groups, is one example of this coalition work. This is a time to come together around shared values. With so much at stake we can’t afford perfect partners.

But that is far from the only issue we need to be concerned about. There is a long list: bringing the hostages home, supporting transpeople, protecting immigrants, the slashing of the federal workforce, ceasefire with Gaza, democracy itself, the climate, reproductive rights, the future of medical research, deporting people without due process, the rise in antisemitism, it is a shockingly long, and still incomplete, list.

What rises to the surface for me in this moment, not because it matters more, but because it is perhaps more stealthy in its danger, is the weaponization of antisemitism. I don’t have to tell you that we are seeing antisemitism come to the fore in ways previously unimaginable. Hate speech, defacement of Jewish property and institutions, threats of physical harm, actual violence. The list goes on. You know about the number of synagogues experiencing bomb threats, which even when thankfully false, creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. How many of you have had to deal with damage to property? How many of you have received threats to your personal safety or that of your families? And of course there is the very real harassment and threats of danger to Jewish students on college campuses.

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