The Fugitive and the Path-Seeker (Parshat Ki Tavo)

Commentary on Parshat Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1 – 29:8) “…My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation” (Deut. 26:5). This verse constitutes the kernel of the Passover Haggadah. When we tell our freedom story, we start...
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The Triple Lives of Refugees (Parshat Shemot)

Commentary on Parshat Shemot (Exodus 1:1 – 6:1) The opening lines of the book of Exodus serve as a bridge between a family history and the birth of a nation. Somehow, in an infinitesimal span, the progeny of one man becomes an entire people: the Israelites. And a very prolific one at that. The new...
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Justice for the Land and Its Inhabitants

Commentary on Parshat Behar (Leviticus 25:1 – 26:2) In Leviticus 25, the Torah famously explains the practice of the sabbatical year (shmitah) and the jubilee year (yovel), in which those who work the land refrain from farming in order to let the land rest. It’s not hard to see a connection between the ancient practice...
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When the Entire Community Is Guilty

...as we learn from Leviticus, for communal sin there can be expiation. The process begins not with bringing a bull to the sanctuary, but with a commitment to learn history, and a commitment to ensure that history is learned by others.
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Rabbi Jill Jacobs headshot

Taking Time: A Resource for Shabbat by Rabbi Jill Jacobs

God, according to the Torah, created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. This doesn’t mean that the world was perfect at the end of the sixth day of creation. Rather, God models the necessity of taking just one day to experience the world as it is, while acknowledging our own limitations in perfecting it.
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