A d’var Torah for Yitro (Ex.18:1-20:23) by Rabbi Gordon Tucker. The Book of Eikhah (Lamentations) contains this apparently oxymoronic phrase when speaking of how ancient Judea had lost its moral way: “It did not remember its future” (1:9). What could it mean to remember something that is not in the past? The usual ways of...
Sabrina Lustgarten, Country Director for HIAS in Ecuador, writes that Parshat Vayakhel emphasizes "the importance of harmonizing wills to achieve a common good."
Yet to this day it taught me a most valuable lesson: the power of representation. The power of one line in a teaching, sermon, saying of a teacher, or political statement. Because it might seem minor to so many, yet you never know who is going to be the nine-year-old who might find themselves in it.
A D’var Torah for Parshat Vayishlach by Rabbi Rachael Bregman I live in the land where Trump and Biden signs face off from across property lines. We are told daily that our brothers, our neighbors, are a threat to our lives, are our enemies, because of how we vote. My “other” is not an abstraction,...
Let’s review how Joseph exercises power once he achieves it in Egypt. He takes revenge on the brothers who sold him into slavery, by calling them spies and holding Shimon in prison. Then, after reconciling with them, he uses his position to enrich his family, giving them the fertile land of Goshen to settle in....
A D’var Torah for Parshat Vayechi by Randi Weingarten The Book of Genesis, the first in the Jewish Bible, begins with the creation of the universe. It can’t get more big picture than that. We are told that the creation of humanity is accomplished so that every person is b’tzelem elohim, in the image of...
A D’var Torah by Rabbi Nancy Wiener for Parshat Bo The rabbis teach that, at the dawning of a new day, we must wait to begin our morning prayers until we can recognize another’s face in the distance. In this inaugural week, we can now see faces that reflect our nation’s diversity in the House...
To create meaningful and lasting change in our world, we can never dilute the messages we so believe in. Instead, we must work hard to make those messages accessible to people of a variety of social and political backgrounds, relying heavily on our most sacred tactic: the “miracle of translation.”