I believe in the worth of every human life

March 27, 2020 As the weeks go on, I’m hearing from more and more of you who are ill yourselves, worrying about friends or family who are ill, or mourning deaths. I’m sending much love and prayers for healing your way. This week has been dominated by conversations about how many deaths would be acceptable...
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Spotlight On: Rabbi Mira Rivera

Rabbi Mira Rivera is Associate Rabbi and Director of Pastoral Care at Romemu in New York City. She serves as a rabbi and mentor at Ammud: the Jews of Color Torah Academy and actively supports LUNAR: the Asian-Jewish Film Project.  She has co-chaired the rabbinical council of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) and continues...
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Community of Practice: Israel/Palestine

This Community of Practice is for Chaverim who look to answer the question, “how can I be a clergy member who effectively leads in my Jewish space and in my larger community around issues of Israel and Palestine?”
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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...
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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 café, 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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Holding Onto the Image in Every Human Being, Even One’s Adversary

In the militia headquarters in Odessa decades ago, I was surrounded by harsh interrogators who castigated my friend and me for visiting Russian Jews, who were aliens in their eyes. I felt anger and even hatred at these leaders and their many followers who had made Jewish life impossible for a large segment of our...
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Never Forget the Hungry

This week’s Parashah, Miketz, contains the well known story of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams about the seven fat cows being devoured by the seven skinny cows and the seven healthy sheaves of wheat being displaced by the seven sickly sheaves. Joseph, brought out of his prison cell to interpret the dreams, goes farther and advises Pharaoh...
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Keep Digging

Parashat Toldot tells a story of three wells dug by Isaac. Abraham Avinu has just died, and Isaac, not yet “Avinu,” seems to struggle to find his own way in the world. He is summoned, but the path is not clear. Isaac sets about re-digging his father’s old wells. Is he searching for something of...
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An Echo of Shofar

At the end of June, my husband and I took our daughter, Zohar, to Harrisburg. She was six months old at the time. We each put on a tallit (the baby’s was a black onesie screen-printed with an image of a tallit) and gathered in a tent on the Capitol steps along with rabbis, cantors...
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