A Mirror For Our Giving

My sister is developmentally disabled. Although she is very high functioning, she still needs a lot of support, including financially. She is able to live independently and, until two years ago, was fully employed. She is approaching 60 and, as she ages, her increasing physical issues affect her functioning. She was laid off from her...
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Powerful Kings and Degraded Hallelujahs

Right now, our society is in the middle of an important discussion about how we deal with sexual harassment and assault, especially from our leaders and other public figures. With the grossly inappropriate conduct of media moguls, actors, comedians, celebrity chefs, professional athletes, news anchors, business executives, clergy, politicians, and other powerful men coming to...
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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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Vayikra: Mincha and Roses

To stand for human dignity means not only insisting on the right to basic survival needs, but the right to live fully — to experience joy, pleasure, love, friendship, beauty.
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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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Hearing the Cry of Oppression

We often read the biblical narrative of slavery as a relic of our past. However, as consumers in a global economy we unwittingly utilize products tainted by slavery every day. In 2011, a group of workers from the New York State Fair appeared at a health clinic near Syracuse, New York with malnutrition. It turned...
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David Behrman

David Behrman is President & Publisher of Behrman House Publishers. Prior to joining Behrman House, he was a consultant in the New York office of McKinsey & Co., serving clients in the financial services, professional services, food, and transportation industries, as well as several prominent museums in New York and Washington DC. Prior to that...
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Rabbi Lester Bronstein

Lester Bronstein has served as rabbi of Bet Am Shalom Synagogue in White Plains, New York since 1989. He has served in leadership roles with the Westchester Board of Rabbis, the White Plains Religious Leaders Association, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, the UJA-Federation of New York, the JFNA Rabbinic Cabinet, the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education,...
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