These 7 divrei Torah, one for each of the 7 weeks of the Omer that lead up to Shavuot, span the breadth of the entire Torah, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, and come from 7 exceptional T'ruah rabbis who lend their voices to the call for a more just and moral world.
Nowhere do we see God and the people in a real process of engagement with their history and what is broken in their relationship. With so much left unsaid and unresolved, we should not be surprised to see the same issues in their relationship emerging again and again.
...the Torah instructs that in the midst of our holiest cities and amongst people who do the work of God, that precisely there — in that place — are the vulnerable to take refuge.
...In our seats, we forgive ourselves for these sins, the ones we committed and those we did not. But outside of the synagogue, we continue to hold others, who actually seek teshuvah for many of those same sins, forever in chains.
As the world has moved on, and as precautions have dropped, high-risk disabled folks are increasingly feeling an existential isolation, not just a physical one.
When someone like Kenneth Smith is praying even as he is lying on a bed of death, how can we pass by once we are made aware, awakened to God's presence there?
Just as Ephraim and Menashe became the gold standard of siblings in the eyes of Jewish tradition, so too are we called to extend a loving hand to all the people we come across, no matter who they are, how they may differ from us, or what else may be going on in our own lives.