U.S. Fellows

The T’ruah Rabbinical and Cantorial Student Summer Fellowship in Human Rights offers a select cohort of rabbinical/cantorial students an eight week experience working in a human rights/social justice organization in New York, learning about human rights in Jewish text and tradition, and gaining the skills to be human rights leaders in your own communities. Learn...
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Letter from the Mexico Border

T’ruah chaver Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie shared this letter after returning from our March 2019 delegation with HIAS to El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico. Since the Trump administration launched its “zero tolerance” policies at the Mexico border, T’ruah has sent five clergy delegations to bear witness and stand in solidarity with immigrants and...
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Ready to rabbi, thanks to you

Three days after Election Day, we stood with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim clergy colleagues outside of the Pennsylvania Convention Center where votes were being counted. We came to lift our voices in prayer to assert that “Every vote is sacred.” We came to honor our ancestors who paved our way to the polls, especially Black...
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Visiting East Jerusalem with T’ruah

It’s been a month since I spent a day in East Jerusalem with 15 other rabbinical and cantorial students as part of T’ruah’s Israel Program. I needed time to gather my thoughts and feelings before writing. We saw a lot that day — the Green Line that was once the border between Israel and Jordan,...
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Proximity for Consolation and Deliverance

July has been a hard month. Elie Weisel passed away. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were senselessly shot and killed by policemen. Women wearing tallit, kippot, and tefilin while praying with the Torah were shouted down and called “Amalek” by fellow Jews at the Kotel. Eight police officers, five in Dallas and three in Baton...
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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...
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Why Listen to the “Goy”?

This week’s Torah portion is Yitro, named for Moses’s father-in-law, a non-Jew. It is in this parashah that we receive the Ten Commandments and make our covenant with God. So, how could the Rabbis have decided to name such an important parashah after a gentile? In today’s climate of polarization, it is more important than...
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