Atem Nitzavim: Standing Together Against Hunger

Imagine the scene. Groups of men, from tribal leaders to woodchoppers and water-drawers, standing in the same place. Elders interspersed with officials and women with babies on their hips. Children running in and out, weaving between the people, even the stranger within the camp, all gathered together on this day. Atem Nitzavim. You stand this...
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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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Hunger: Edom or Israel?

There were three hundred and sixty five thoroughfares in the great city of Rome, and in each there were three hundred and sixty five palaces; and in each palace, there were three hundred and sixty five stories and each story contained sufficient to provide the whole world with food. (Talmud Bavli Pesachim 118b) With less...
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Dealing With Guilt, Getting Closer To Hope

“Some are guilty, all are responsible.” – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel What are we to do about our guilt? How do we take responsibility? Opportunities to feel guilty are everywhere these days. Simply opening Facebook or turning on the television brings us face to face with terrible tragedies and injustices caused by human failures and...
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Harvest Prayer

Sukkot, the fall harvest holiday, blends our gratitude for a bountiful harvest, our awareness of the fragility and vulnerability of all life, and our ancient communal memory of leaving Egypt to travel in the desert under God’s protection. This prayer-poem connects those themes to the astounding human rights accomplishments of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers...
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Dream Until It’s Your Reality

Like Jacob’s dream, our justice work must be grounded in this world, absorbing the pain of everyday injustice with our hearts open to those suffering. And yet, our work must remain aspirational, reaching for the sky and not settling for anything less than our basic demands of human dignity and human rights.
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Haggadah Supplements

Get one-page source sheets to help stimulate discussion at your seder table, designed to reengage in the work of liberating our world just as the Israelites were liberated from Egypt.
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