Rabbi Adir Yolkut

Yitro: The Jewish Case for Protecting Voting Rights in 2024

As inheritors of a multi-vocal Jewish tradition that welcomes dissent and minority opinions, allowing people the chance to freely, legally, and openly participate in the democratic process strikes me as very Jewish. So to look at some of these harsh policies that stifle the voices of the downtrodden contradicts so much of what we hold dear in Judaism.
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T'ruah Rally

About Us

Our Mission Our Strategies Our Name Our History Our Values Our Mission T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights brings the Torah’s ideals of human dignity, equality, and justice to life by empowering rabbis and cantors to be moral voices and to lead Jewish communities in advancing democracy and human rights for all people in...
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Id, Superego, and Israel

Parshat Sh’lach seems, at first glance, to have two totally disconnected halves. Part one is the story of the twelve scouts whom Moses sent to Canaan and their sin that led God to decree 40 years of desert wandering. Part two is a series of laws about sacrifices, tithing, repentance, and wearing tzitzit. But a...
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Opening the Narrow Straits with Advance Care Planning

We have come to the end of Genesis, and with it the conclusion of the stories of our matriarchs and patriarchs. For the last several weeks we have been engaged with the stories of the children of Jacob, focusing mainly on his favored son, Joseph. Now Joseph is on his deathbed. We are privy to...
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Slavery, Then and Now

In this moving sermon, Rabbi Gordon Tucker discusses the problem of modern slavery and describes his experience visiting sites from the African slave trade. SLAVERY THEN AND NOW Rabbi Gordon Tucker   The Torah, in Leviticus 25:55, has God saying “The children of Israel are My servants”, and the rabbinic tradition afterwards added the following...
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One Land, Many Names

Jacob said to his kin: Gather stones. They took stones, made a mound, and ate there by the mound. Laban called it Yegar-Sahaduta, but Jacob called it Gal-Ed. (Gen 31:46-47) Two different languages, the same name. Witness-mound. Laban’s name for the site of this peace treaty is in Aramaic; Jacob’s is in Hebrew. How did...
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Sanctuary Cities: No Walk in the Dog Park

Commentary on Parshat Masei (Numbers 33:1 – 36:13) When I take my dog to the dog park, he loves to run from picnic table to picnic table and dive underneath them, seeking shade and safety. The picnic tables are a safe zone, a refuge, a sanctuary. Between 1980 and 1991, nearly one million Central Americans fled...
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Hearing the Cry of Oppression

We often read the biblical narrative of slavery as a relic of our past. However, as consumers in a global economy we unwittingly utilize products tainted by slavery every day. In 2011, a group of workers from the New York State Fair appeared at a health clinic near Syracuse, New York with malnutrition. It turned...
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Private Prisons, God’s People

A number of years ago my husband’s nephew suggested that we invest some funds with him in high-risk high-yield bonds. We did. After earning a good return, I asked my husband what his nephew had done with our money. He answered that his nephew, among other ventures, had invested in for-profit prisons. I was horrified....
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The Mournfulness of Her Song: Hearing the Cries of the Enslaved

On my recent visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, I was moved to tears by one of the readings displayed in the darkened memorial room to those who were transported to America on slave ships from Africa. I learned that the chained slaves would sing songs of...
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