Gerim ‘R Us

No one likes to admit this, but, (deep breath) truthfully, I am prejudiced. I internalized at an early age that many kinds of people who do not look like me cannot be trusted. Even as I heard these things and thought that they were not true, the warnings lodged in my body. So much so...
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The Heart of the Torah

We often point to Kedoshim, The Holiness Code (Lev. 19 & 20), as containing the heart of the Torah, the mitzvah to Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). Having recently retold the story of our liberation from oppression in Egypt at our Pesach seders, we might reconsider and look to Leviticus 19:33-34 as the...
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At Our Season of Liberation, Black Lives Matter

Change in the air. Sugar-flecked red, yellow, orange, and green jelled semi-circle slices; macaroons; pounds of nuts; Barton’s tin can almond kisses; overflowing grocery bags. My mother and I shop among the street carts and small shops that dot Blake Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn. Although my family is not observant, the white gold-rimmed...
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…And Not a Drop To Drink.

“What gets me is how fast the state has just denied — ‘We can’t prove it’s the water,’” Mr. Monahan said. “I think they’re so afraid of tying nine deaths to this. The whole thing is just such a ridiculous tragedy.” (New York Times, February 23, 2016) From almost day one, it was obvious something...
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Hope and a Listening Ear

I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. (Exodus 6:5) It seems these days I have an endless array of guest speakers in my congregation: about the Syrian refugee crisis, about the death penalty, about homelessness, about the violence fraying...
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An Echo of Shofar

At the end of June, my husband and I took our daughter, Zohar, to Harrisburg. She was six months old at the time. We each put on a tallit (the baby’s was a black onesie screen-printed with an image of a tallit) and gathered in a tent on the Capitol steps along with rabbis, cantors...
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Let Us See Your Goodness

On the heels of the great sin of Israel–worshipping an oversized molten calf while Moses took “so long coming down from the mountain” (Exodus 32)–Moses implores God not to desert the Israelites. “See, You tell me, ‘lead this people forward’ but you have not told me whom You will send with me. If You Yourself...
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The Pursuit of Justice

This week’s parshah opens with the command, “Give yourself judges and administrators to carry out just decisions…” (Deut. 16:18) On the face of it, this seems to be about how society should be ordered. It needs police, judges, lawyers, and a whole mechanism of justice in order to function rightly. Rather than each individual carrying...
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Inescapable Face

“There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me. However, at the same time, the face of the Other is destitute; it is the poor for whom I can do all, and to whom I owe all. “ —Emmanuel Levinas Rabbi Joshua, the son of Levi, said: at...
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