Eish Zarah: The Feeling of Being Foreign

I had never been inside Perth Amboy’s quaint, two room art gallery on the outskirts of this heavily Hispanic town in Central New Jersey. What brought me inside at this moment, nearly four years after I moved to Perth Amboy to be the rabbi of Congregation Beth Mordecai, the remaining synagogue in town, was not...
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The Dead and the Living in Hebron

For millennia, we Jews have been burying our dead outside the city limits, in caves, in fields and on hillsides. Just recently, for example, I stood with a crowd of people in a field, waiting to bury a friend, cousin, classmate, brother, son. Together we, the living, placed one of our own into the earth....
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Mob vs. Movement: Ki Tisa and the Power of the People

A group of people, fighting for a cause. It seems powerful, it seems romantic, it seems like the way to build a movement and achieve progress. But what distinguishes a movement from a mob? Five weeks ago, we stood together in shul and listened to the parshah’s recounting of the Torah’s climactic moment: the receiving...
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Yovel Text Study: Shofar

The Torah describes counting a cycle of seven seven-year periods—forty-nine years in all, and then sounding the shofar to announce the beginning of the yovel (Jubilee) year, during which land returns to its original owners and slaves go free. We associate the shofar primarily with Rosh Hashanah, which is known in the Torah as Yom...
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Education: The Building Blocks of Justice and Understanding

“In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if [they are] denied the opportunity of an education,” U.S Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren declared in the famed case of Board v. Board of Education, almost 64 years ago. Decades later, in 2009, Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan...
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Leviticus: The Tipping Point Towards Action

Why was the book of Leviticus placed in the center of Torah? You know that there had to be other options. We all feel the shift. Left on the cliff-hanger at the end of Exodus, we spend 8-10 weeks with nary a hint of narrative. It’s as if the Torah lifts us out of time...
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Kedoshim: Love the Stranger as Yourself

On a recent Sunday, I was invited to preach at a neighboring Episcopalian church. This church is unusual in that its members are a mixture of English and Spanish speakers. The vast majority of the Spanish speakers are undocumented immigrants and their children. My congregation has been working with this church community to support and, if...
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How Darkness Immobilizes (Parshat Bo)

Commentary on Parshat Bo (Exodus 10:1 – 13:16) I am usually one to heed a call to mobilize for justice and human rights. I participated in a peace delegation to Israel and Palestine at the beginning of the Second Intifada and was at Standing Rock for the clergy action against the Dakota Pipeline. But lately,...
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