In This Stormy Moment, We Must Make Room For Everyone On The Boat

This week's Torah reading of Parshat Kedoshim questions us about our human relationships, how we treat our siblings, and how we relate to our neighbors to make this world a better place to live. So here I go back to the beginning. When I read in Kedoshim, "Do not stand before the blood of your neighbor" (Leviticus 19:16), I feel the moral obligation to shout that it is not nationality that makes a life something sacred and that we have the responsibility to watch over our neighbors.
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Migrants on God’s Land

That’s how I found myself chanting and marching, yelling to children that they were not forgotten, that they were loved – while holding the hand of my youngest son, whom I love so much it hurts. Having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside of your body.
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If Only I Had Known, I Would Have Changed For The Better

For the rest of us, it took ground penetrating radar, and other technologies which render the invisible visible, to wake us up. But for the Indigenous communities most directly affected, none of that was needed. The voices we most desperately need to be listening to already knew. They already saw.
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Reckoning With the Harm We’ve Caused

According to the Netziv, the brit is meant as a healing salve. God knows the ways committing acts of violence may leave a permanent scar on those who commit them. Perhaps God is speaking from experience. 
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People Over Property

The lesson of Matot-Massei is very simple: If we want to move forward, we must first begin to acknowledge the people behind the comforts and luxuries of our everyday lives. We must acknowledge that our healthcare system is no longer truly about care, but about profit.
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Holding the Space

We were told earlier in the Torah to love our neighbor and even the stranger as ourselves. But these commandments are included and yet reframed in our mitzvah, "V’Ahavta et Adonai," love everything/everyone. Signaling, perhaps, that we are also to understand love differently, that we are ready to learn a higher level of embodying love.
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