Steven Morgen

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Sep 9, 2021, 10:06 AM

Rosh Hashanah, Creation and Climate Change

Last month . They had reviewed 14,000 scientific publications, and over 78,000 review comments. Here are some of the headline bullet-points from the report: Recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid, and intensifying, and unprecedented in thousands of...

Aug 17, 2020, 4:51 AM

Seeing and Being Seen – Creating Community

This is a sermon I gave this past Shabbat at our congregation. We have two minyanim of people in our larger sanctuary spaces and then Livestream the services to our members at home. Although I refer to our synagogue...

Jun 22, 2020, 5:41 AM

The Spies and Leadership in Times of Crisis

This week’s Torah portion begins with a well-known story. The Israelites have left Mount Sinai and are preparing to enter the Promised Land. God instructs Moses to select 12 scouts to check out the Land of Israel and report...

Jul 14, 2019, 7:23 AM

Lessons from Apollo 11

It was about 8:30 in the morning Houston time on July 16, 1969 – 50 years ago – that a Saturn V rocket lifted the Apollo 11 spacecraft off its platform at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning an...

May 29, 2019, 12:46 AM

Kedoshim – Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

“Everyone shall revere his mother and his father and keep my Sabbaths, I am the LORD.” (Lev. 19:3) “You shall not steal; you shall not deal deceitfully or falsely with one another.” (19:11) “You shall not insult the deaf,...

Dec 11, 2018, 11:59 PM

Bush’s 1,000 Points of Light and Hanukkah

This past week the nation mourned the loss of the 41st President of the United States: George Herbert Walker Bush. Many things have been said and written over the past week about his numerous accomplishments, his service to our...

Nov 26, 2018, 2:49 AM

The flood, the rainbow, and global warming

The devastation caused by Hurricane Michael this past week could not have come at a more ironic time in the Jewish Torah reading cycle. Our ancestors might have thought that floods are caused directly by God as a punishment for...

Sep 12, 2018, 8:45 PM

Using Our Words (Wisely)

Words are perhaps one of the most important inventions of humanity. All of the advances in science and medicine have been made possible because we can use words to communicate to each other our own observations and discoveries. Each new...

Apr 26, 2018, 6:27 AM

Seeing the other

As has been widely reported in the media a couple of weeks ago, two young black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, went to a Starbucks in Philadelphia last week. They arrived 10 minutes early for a business meeting....

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About Me

Rabbi Morgen is an Associate Rabbi of Congregation Beth Yeshurun in Houston, TX. He has served on the Boards of the Houston Jewish Federation, and the local boards of the AJC, and the ADL. He is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute. He graduated from UCLA School of Law and practiced law in Los Angeles. He was ordained by JTS in 1998.