Your Joy Is Your Sorrow Unmasked

A week ago Sunday, marked by the new moon of the Jewish month of Adar, I spent the day at the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia, bearing witness to the desecration of 539 gravestones. Joining with Muslim, Quaker and Christian neighbors, people of faith and conscience, our hands in the earth restoring headstones, as...
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Mob vs. Movement: Ki Tisa and the Power of the People

A group of people, fighting for a cause. It seems powerful, it seems romantic, it seems like the way to build a movement and achieve progress. But what distinguishes a movement from a mob? Five weeks ago, we stood together in shul and listened to the parshah’s recounting of the Torah’s climactic moment: the receiving...
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Encompassing the Truth in Four Directions

In college, I used to tutor inner city middle school students through an organization called Making Waves. Once during a staff training, I was placed in a group with two Latinx tutors and two black tutors; the other group consisted of five white tutors. When my group playfully accused the supervisors of dividing us up...
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Praying That God Is Not Nauseous

“The land vomits you out?!” one of my congregants in my weekly parshah class exclaimed. We were learning parshat Behar. I was trying to explain the conditions in which we are allowed by God to dwell in the land of Israel. In order to dwell in the land we must act with holiness, following God’s...
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Redigging the wells

In the struggle over democracy, it is not just about big ideas, levers of power, or sums of money: It is about human lives.
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In Time of Upheaval: Wonder & Awe OR Wealth & Wall?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that there are two ways of being in the world: “the way of expediency” and “the way of wonder.” In the former, we seek to take what we can from the world and others; in the latter, our focus is on how we can serve. When we are driven by...
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The House Is Still On Fire

The Torah this week introduces us to Abraham and Sarah, our soon-to-be parents of monotheism. Each year, I find the call from God familiar, yet still chilling: ‘lech l’cha,’ get up and leave your place of familiarity and comfort to journey to this new place, one that you don’t know, but which will help to...
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Jacob and Laban: How Not To Do Healthcare

A few months ago I received a letter from my health insurance company telling me that they were cancelling my insurance plan, and that as of December 31 I would have to find new coverage. I was not alone in this scenario, as this particular company cancelled plans in several counties in my state. The reason, as...
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One Year After the Hard-Hearted Insurrection of January 6, 2021

The parshah is pushing us to learn from the insurrection – and not ever to forget it — in service of a larger goal. When major moments like this shock our systems, a part of us needs to embrace that shock and allow it to become constructive, something to propel us forward into courageous action.
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