Baum’s Branches: Deep Roots & New Connections

My weekly message is branching out! Baum’s Branches will arrive as a separate email through CSK's Constant Contact, replacing my message in CSK’s weekly email so our congregational updates are easier to read and navigate.

Each week, I’ll share Torah reflections, sermons, and selected articles, podcasts, and videos that connect Jewish wisdom to our lives today. I hope you’ll join me for a little learning, inspiration, and reflection before Shabbat!

Rabbi David Baum

This Week's Message - Shabbat Noah - Build for Yourself an Ark

Shalom Shaarei Kodesh,

Last Shabbat, I spoke about the word od, “again,” and what it means for us to become the people of od. In the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve experience terrible loss, but the Torah tells us that they turn toward life again. That idea felt especially important as we marked three years since October 7: we remember what was lost, but we also continue to build, hope, create, and, yes, dance again.

This week, the Torah takes us into the story of Noah, and perhaps the question changes slightly. If last week was about how we begin again, this week asks: what helps us survive the flood long enough to begin again?

God tells Noah:

“Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood.”

The Hasidic master known as the Netivot Shalom reads Noah’s ark as much more than a boat. Each of us needs an ark, something that can protect what is most important when the world around us feels overwhelming.

For him, Shabbat can be an ark. Torah can be an ark. Sacred community can be an ark. And sometimes, even one mitzvah, one relationship, or one small piece of spiritual strength can become the rope we hold onto when we feel like we are drowning.

So this Shabbat, I want to ask a very personal question:

What is your ark?

What protects you from the noise, fear, anger, and chaos around us? What helps you hold onto who you are? And what are we, as a sacred community, responsible for preserving together?

Last week, the Torah taught us that there is always an od, an again.

This week, Noah reminds us that sometimes, before we can begin again, we first have to build the ark that will carry us there.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi David Baum

Last Shabbat's Sermon:



How To Begin Again: Becoming the People of 'Od'

Parashat Bereshit

Three years after October 7, I turned to the opening chapters of Genesis to ask a question that feels especially urgent: how do we begin again after a world has been shattered?

From tohu va-vohu, the chaos before creation, to Adam and Eve beginning again after the death of Abel, the Torah gives us one small but powerful word: od — again.

In this sermon, I connect that word to Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s teaching about rebuilding after destruction, the story of my grandfather’s survival after the Shoah, the words of Hatikvah, and the Israeli song Tamid Ohev Oti.



What does it mean for us to become the people of od — a people who remember what was lost, refuse to surrender hope, and continue to build, create, and dance again?

Od lo avdah tikvateinu. Our hope is not lost.

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN TO LAST WEEK'S SERMON