The Holiest Place on Earth

Think of all the reasons you can get kicked out of Disneyland: if you are caught cutting in line; if you take video on roller coasters; if you smoke in undesignated areas; if you (an adult) dress up as a Disney character. (I love this last one!) I know that for some people, Disneyland/World are...
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Spotlight On: Rabbi Mira Rivera

Rabbi Mira Rivera is Associate Rabbi and Director of Pastoral Care at Romemu in New York City. She serves as a rabbi and mentor at Ammud: the Jews of Color Torah Academy and actively supports LUNAR: the Asian-Jewish Film Project.  She has co-chaired the rabbinical council of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) and continues...
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On Power, Hope, and Change

A Sermon for Rosh Hashanah, 5772 Rabbi Barbara Penzner   I’d like to start by talking about the movies. Who here has seen “Moneyball”? Who is planning to see it? Good, that means that you may have some idea about the movie. It’s the story of Billy Beane, general manager of the 2002 Oakland Athletics....
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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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The Weeping Mother Speaks: On Tisha B’Av, Remembering the Pain of Separation

Tisha B’Av reminds us: You know what this awful pain feels like. First, every year, we are supposed to practice feeling the excruciating dissonance between the way things are and the way they should be. We have to feel the deep outrage and pain of the crying mother. But we must also be Rachel, weeping not only for her children, but naming the more compassionate way of being that we know, that we remember is possible.
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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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