Rabbi Emeritus
Rabbi Elias J. Lieberman was born in Baltimore, MD, in 1953. He attended Vassar College, where he earned his A.B. degree in Drama, cum laude, in 1975.
Rabbi Lieberman was ordained in 1984 from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. From 1984 to 1990 he served as Assistant, and then Associate, Rabbi of Temple Oheb Shalom in Baltimore, Maryland. In July, 1990 he accepted the call to serve the Falmouth Jewish Congregation.
Rabbi Lieberman has been actively involved in many social justice concerns during his rabbinate including freedom for Soviet Jewry, equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people, and furthering understanding between the Jewish and African-American communities. He is active in the effort to combat HIV/AIDS and is an eager participant in a variety of interfaith efforts. In December, 2005 he was appointed as an inaugural member of the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission.
Rabbi Lieberman has written:
“Judaism cannot be lived in isolation … to be a Jew is to be part of a community. Those Jews who actively affiliate with a synagogue are already making a significant statement about the importance, in their hearts and minds, of Jewish survival. Mine is the privilege, as rabbi, to encourage and counsel, to inspire, and be inspired by those whose lives intersect my own.”
“It is my fervent desire to see the Falmouth Jewish Congregation become a place where Judaism is enshrined as a vibrant force in our collective lives–a congregation eager to mine the riches of our tradition for inspiration; to fashion innovative interpretations of time-honored rituals to carry us into the future; to build bridges across chasms of alienation and despair; to create a legacy for our children which will nourish their aspirations; to try to find meaning in a world long on material comforts but short on the stuff of the spirit.”
To reach Rabbi Lieberman by e-mail: rebelias@comcast.net
RABBI'S THOUGHTS
A Tempest in a Coffee Cup
As I write these words we’re several weeks away from Thanksgiving, but the “Christmas Wars” have already begun. The first salvo was fired at Starbucks Coffee. Joshua Feuerstein—a self-described “American evangelist, Internet, and social media personality”—rages in a widely-seen video against “the age of political correctness” and the new seasonal coffee cups at Starbucks. What’s the issue? The cups [...]
Rabbi Lieberman’s Testimony Concerning “The Compassionate Care for the Terminally Ill Act”
In late October I submitted the following testimony before the Joint Public Health Committee of the legislature in support of H.B. 1991, “The Compassionate Care for the Terminally Ill Act” which would create a compassionate aid-in-dying law in our state. If passed, Massachusetts would join Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana and California in providing its citizens with important decision-making abilities [...]
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month
Learned Helplessness They say These clever scientist folks, That there is such a thing As learned helplessness; Cage a rat Subject it To repeated trauma Until it is so tired of fighting It will lie in the corner And take the pain Not leaving Even when the door is opened I know this to be true This has been [...]
Resources on racism and white privilege
In preparation for my Rosh Hashanah (5776) morning sermon, I read a number of books and essays on the themes or racism and white privilege. Here are some of the sources I consulted that I deem worthy of your consideration: BOOKS Between The World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) A searing memoir, in the form of [...]
Who knows where the time goes?
[Remarks offered by Rabbi Lieberman at the celebration of his 25th anniversary with FJC, Aug. 8, 2015] Friends....I am at this moment, as they say in Mamaloshen (Yiddish), farklempt....”unable to speak because of emotion; choked up.” But speak I must, and speak I will, because moments such as these are incredibly precious and rare. First, I have words of [...]
Pole-arities
As I write these words the reverberations of two events that occurred nine days apart in June continue to be felt in our nation. On June 17, nine members of a Bible-study group at AME Emanuel Methodist Church in Charleston, SC were brutally murdered in an act of unvarnished racial hatred. Just yesterday, after mounting public pressure and heated [...]
Boomer Shabbat – 2015!
One of my favorite proverbs states: “The one who sings prays twice.” What about the one who sings, shouts, stomps her feet and dances in the aisles? Now that is truly a fervent kind of praying! It’s that kind of praying, my friends, that we will experience once again, on July 17 at 7:30 PM, in the Meeting House, [...]
The Little Frogs From the Moon
Among the signs that spring on Cape Cod has truly arrived (and that the threat of rogue snowstorms has truly passed) is a distinctive sound one begins to hear on spring evenings when one passes by wetlands or bogs. It is that unmistakable, high-pitched soundings of tiny frogs....”peepers”. On Martha's Vineyard, peepers are commonly called "pinkletinks"; in New Brunswick, [...]
The Eye of Providence
Do you have a dollar bill at hand? If so, take it out and look, for a moment, at the back side of the bill. There, to the left of the word “ONE”, is a circle inside of which sits a pyramid, capped by an “all-seeing eye”. Wikipedia tells us that this is “the Eye of Providence (or the [...]
A new tool for a new generation
What are the tools you keep at hand to accomplish those specific tasks you deem important? A computer/smart-phone to help you stay connected? That rolling pin with the perfect heft that was your grandmother’s that helps you roll out dough to the perfect thickness? That snow-rake you had the foresight to purchase last year that helped you avoid dreaded [...]