Abraham and the Unexpected Needs of Refugees

As our ancestor Abraham experienced, our most liminal moments also often coincide with moments calling for meaning-making and the rituals that bring us spiritually home. Yet few who flee by forced circumstances arrive with the means that Abraham had to purchase the dignity of sacred space and time.
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Headshot of Rabbi Jay LeVine

Tetzaveh: Meet the Darkness with a Persistent Light

We need each other’s lights. A friend, colleague, or ally — perhaps even those we consider adversaries — have the sacred potential to ignite in us the lamp of tamid consciousness and the willingness to widen our circles and give ourselves to the tasks of care, compassion, advocacy, and love.
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What It Means to Be a Sanctuary Synagogue

“Sanctuary” as defined by the contemporary New Sanctuary Movement has a variety of different meanings, all of which have the ultimate goal of protecting immigrants and preventing deportation. An individual local sanctuary network may have different definitions or needs from a sanctuary network in another community. These are the different forms of congregational participation as...
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U.S. Fellows

The T’ruah Rabbinical and Cantorial Student Summer Fellowship in Human Rights offers a select cohort of rabbinical/cantorial students an eight week experience working in a human rights/social justice organization in New York, learning about human rights in Jewish text and tradition, and gaining the skills to be human rights leaders in your own communities. Learn...
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Sukkot for Housing Justice: Week of Action!

Join T'ruah and partners from Sept. 27 to Oct. 6 for a Week of Action: Sukkot for Housing Justice to extend a warm welcome and hospitality to everyone without shelter in our city: migrants, unhoused New Yorkers, people on the edge of losing their homes.
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Peering Outside the Camp

“Joseph’s master had him put in prison…but even while he was there in prison, God was with Joseph.” -Genesis 39:20-21 Bulletproof glass separates me and my congregant. David [not his real name] and I sit opposite one another, in identical, soundproof, cinder-block visiting cubicles at a prison an hour’s drive from my home. He’s wearing...
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Photo of the author, Rabbi Alanna Sklover

Tzav: We Are the Stranger

We know the heart of the stranger and we cannot allow ourselves to lose sight of these people, or allow statistics to blur them and their lives into a faceless “issue.”
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Starting Again, and Again

Once again, all over again, we are beginning at the beginning of the Torah this week. Bereshit bara Elokim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz, “In the beginning G-d created heaven and earth”, at least according to one translation. Haven’t we done this already? Do we really have to go back and consider the beginning again, and...
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