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Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater
Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater is the Executive Director of Friends in Deed, a local, religious-based non-profit addressing homelessness and poverty in the greater Pasadena area. After 5 years in congregations on the east coast, he served 12 years as senior rabbi of Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, where he established himself as an activist and...
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Bay Area
Our Bay Area cluster is currently re-forming. More updates to come. If you are a rabbi or cantor who lives in the Bay Area and is interested in getting involved, please reach out to our Bay Area Organizer, Gen Slosberg. Don’t live in the Bay Area? Check out the Chaverim Hub for opportunities nationally and...
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No Shortcuts to Liberation, Alas
In this week's d'var torah on Parshat Shemot, NYC Councilman Brad Lander draws connections between patterns of oppression and resistance then and now.
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Heart of a Stranger: The Jewish Historical Memory of Torture
You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt. -Ex. 23:9 You were strangers in the land of Egypt reminds us that we have experienced the great suffering that one in a foreign land feels. By remembering the pain which we...
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Joseph’s Jailor and Gideon’s Trumpet: The Scourge of Wrongful Conviction
The Biblical Joseph evokes the dreamer, technicolor coat, and predictions that saved Egypt from famine. Less often recalled is the Joseph who rotted in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Joseph’s slavemaster Potiphar summarily incarcerated Joseph based on the lie of Potiphar’s wife that Joseph had come on to her when, in fact, Joseph...
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Stop Torture Now: A Complete Rabbinic Sourcebook
This is T’ruah’s primary resource booklet on government-sponsored torture, originally published in 2005. It includes the shorter versions of Rabbi Melissa Weintraub’s articles on torture and Jewish law, insertions for High Holidays services, materials for study and discussion, and the original public letter to the Bush Administration, signed by over 800 rabbis and cantors. The full-length versions...
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Signposts for a Troubling Future
Visiting Hebron, one of the first impressions that hits like a sucker-punch to the stomach is of a ghost town. Streets once bustling with thousands of Palestinians are now traversed almost exclusively by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Freedom of movement is squashed. Palestinian doors are welded shut and porches are caged in, ostensibly to protect...
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