Plant Justice Not Settlements

In 2016, T’ruah won an important victory for transparency when we persuaded the Jewish National Fund-USA to publish a list of its projects on its publicly-available tax forms for the first time. That’s the good news. But the bad news is that we now know that JNF-USA doesn’t just plant trees in Israel, but also...
read more

Envisioning a Just Society

In parshat Ki Tetze we encounter the case of the ben sorer u’moreh, the wayward and rebellious son. We read in Devarim 21:18-21 that if a child does not obey his mother and father they should bring him out to the gates of the city before a council of elders, publicly declare him a glutton...
read more

Re’eh: See Immokalee with your own eyes and you’ll understand

See. Re’eh. Much of Sefer Devarim instructs us to listen—Shma. Listening is one important way that people understand and empathize with the stories of others. When we hear or read these from afar, we feel great empathy and outrage. But in our portion, the mitzvot we are called to fulfill require that we see life’s...
read more

The Stranger in our Story

We are creatures of story—it’s how we make sense of ourselves in the world. So it is with purpose that Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Torah, begins with our shared story. Our individual stories define our individual identities; our group story, delivered here by Moses, defines us as a People. What seems...
read more

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...
read more

Kindness in the Days of the Judges

When the book of Ruth is read each Shavuot, I sometimes have a hard time relating to the idyllic world that the book describes. Sure, Boaz is such an upstanding guy; who wouldn’t want to fall in love with him? Ruth herself is an amazing role model, the Jew-by-choice who becomes the great-grandmother of King...
read more

Gerim ‘R Us

No one likes to admit this, but, (deep breath) truthfully, I am prejudiced. I internalized at an early age that many kinds of people who do not look like me cannot be trusted. Even as I heard these things and thought that they were not true, the warnings lodged in my body. So much so...
read more

“Mishpat Echad”

At the end of parashat Emor, our rabbis focus on a single phrase, “You shall have one justice for the stranger and the citizen alike, I am the Eternal.” (Leviticus 24: 22) We have to ask ourselves: how are we doing upholding the principle of equal justice? Let us begin with the great scholar who...
read more

The Heart of the Torah

We often point to Kedoshim, The Holiness Code (Lev. 19 & 20), as containing the heart of the Torah, the mitzvah to Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). Having recently retold the story of our liberation from oppression in Egypt at our Pesach seders, we might reconsider and look to Leviticus 19:33-34 as the...
read more

On Arendt: Creating a Zionism That Owns Its Mistakes

Hannah Arendt would find it very tricky to be a Zionist today. She was critical of David Ben Gurion’s policy of effectively ignoring the Palestinians’ sincere pursuit of national sovereignty. She advocated a Zionism that would be achieved through excellent relations with the Palestinian neighbors, rather than in spite of them. In her essay “To...
read more

Sign up for updates and action alerts

CLOSE
CLOSE