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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Leviticus: The Tipping Point Towards Action

Why was the book of Leviticus placed in the center of Torah? You know that there had to be other options. We all feel the shift. Left on the cliff-hanger at the end of Exodus, we spend 8-10 weeks with nary a hint of narrative. It’s as if the Torah lifts us out of time...
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My trip to Immokalee

CONGREGATION SHA’AREI KODESH 2nd Day of Passover MARCH 27, 2013 ©  RABBI LOUIS RIESER   Hag kasher v’Sameah. I want to thank Rabbi Baum for this invitation to speak about my experience in Immokalee with T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.  In January I joined 9 other rabbis to learn first-hand about the conditions...
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A Message That Will Be Heard

A D’var Torah for Parshat VaEra by Rabbi Dr. Oren Z. Steinitz “Just as it is a mitzvah for a person to deliver a message that will be heard, so is it a mitzvah for a person not to deliver a message that will not be heard.” (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot, 65b). This statement, attributed to...
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Rabbi Lisa D. Grant, Ph.D.

Sukkot: The Tikkun of Climate Action

Let Sukkot be our call to action this year. May it give us the spiritual resolve to live in the midst of great uncertainty and challenge, and to take action to pursue climate justice in this vast interconnected world of ours.
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Id, Superego, and Israel

Parshat Sh’lach seems, at first glance, to have two totally disconnected halves. Part one is the story of the twelve scouts whom Moses sent to Canaan and their sin that led God to decree 40 years of desert wandering. Part two is a series of laws about sacrifices, tithing, repentance, and wearing tzitzit. But a...
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