Consuming With Kedusha

With this week’s parashah, Vayikra, we enter the culturally foreign world of Leviticus. It’s hard to resist the impulse to tune out. Vayikra takes us into a thicket of rituals and laws about animal sacrifices, skin diseases, moldy eruptions, purity status, and . . . have I lost you? Wait! With a little cultural translation,...
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Hunger: Edom or Israel?

There were three hundred and sixty five thoroughfares in the great city of Rome, and in each there were three hundred and sixty five palaces; and in each palace, there were three hundred and sixty five stories and each story contained sufficient to provide the whole world with food. (Talmud Bavli Pesachim 118b) With less...
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A Flood of Unsafe Water

On August 31st, 2005, I sat waiting for a connection in Brussels, coming back from a summer studying in Israel. I was about to begin rabbinical school in just a few weeks. TVs streamed footage of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; it was the first I knew of it, having been cut off from most...
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The Land of Strangers

The midrash teaches that the first human/adam was created with soil from the ground / afar min ha’adamah from every direction, meaning from every place, so that no matter where the first human’s progeny wandered, they would still be at home. Wherever a person dies and is buried, their bodies will not be strangers to the soil,...
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Passover Resources 2021

Download our human rights haggadah T’ruah’s updated haggadah helps transform the seder into a conversation about immigration, racism, workers’ rights, and forced labor. Filled with insightful comments and thought-provoking questions, reflections from activists in the field, and full-color artwork done by detained immigrant children and forced labor survivors, the haggadah can serve as the full...
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The Modern Plagues of Climate Change

When I was a senior in high school I had an alumni interview for entrance into a prestigious college. We sat in a cafĂ©, and I remember telling the alum about my passion for healing the relationship between people and the earth. I probably used the term ‘environmental activist.’ At the end of the interview...
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Yom Kippur at the Lincoln Memorial

I was having lunch with a dear rabbinic colleague. After inquiring into each other’s health and family, I said “I just read the Pope’s Encyclical. It is fantastic. Have you read it?” My friend looked at me quizzically and said, “I never read the Popes’ encyclicals.“ “Well, I never have either, but this is really...
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The Paradox of Havdalah

This is the law of the animal, the bird, every living soul that swarms in the water, and for every creature that creeps on the ground; to distinguish between the impure and the pure, and between creatures that may be eaten and the creatures that may not be eaten.  (Lev. 11:47; Artscroll translation) Parashat Shmini...
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The Generous Heart

Kaethe Morris Hoffer, Executive Director of CAASE (Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation) does the following exercise with groups: Think back to a recent walk in a public space. Imagine someone, anyone, you passed on your way. Now, how much money would it take for you to perform a sex act with, on, or to this...
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Genesis and Gender

Chapter one of Breshit presents an account of creation that provides the ontological foundation for human rights. God creates human beings in the divine image. And having done so, God proclaims that the entire creation is “very good.” The great Hasidic teacher the Kedushat Levi, riffing on the line in the morning prayer “yotzer or...
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