Lessons for Democracy from the Holocaust

A d’var Torah for Yom HaShoah. In many respects, World War II seemed like a triumph of democracy. When the Allies defeated the Axis powers, the world celebrated that democratic nations had been victorious against fascism. On May 8, 1945, Victory Day, Americans danced in the streets and threw confetti from the rooftops to celebrate...
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Favoring the Many, Not the Mighty

This is but one example in a web of inequity that favors an ever-shrinking group of American elites... And yet, one word — Ish, a person — repeated over and over again in the dictation of these mitzvot is a reminder that the work is indeed mine to do as an individual. 
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Reading the Exodus as a Migration Story

If America is to be the land of the free, a melting pot of diversity and equality, it too must clear the stones from the proverbial roads and build up pathways for immigrants, especially refugees and asylum-seekers.
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Leadership Lessons at the Foot of the Mountain

In today’s world, rabbis face the challenge of balancing multiple roles in their communal leadership; a rabbi seeks to “comfort the afflicted,” by being a strong pastoral presence to those in need, while at the same time to “afflict the comfortable,” challenge those who are complacent in their lives to awaken to their broader responsibilities...
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Ending Solitary Confinement

JUMP TO: Current Campaigns Why Jews Should Oppose Solitary Confinement It is not good for a human to be alone. —Genesis 2:18 Either companionship or death. —Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 23a Current Campaigns National T’ruah endorses the historic End Solitary Confinement Act, introduced by Congresswoman Cori Bush (MO-01) (alongside Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY-16), Adriano Espaillat...
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All God’s Creatures Great and Small (Parshat Noach)

The dominion over animals given to humans in Genesis 1:27, compared with the rabbis’ notion that humans were created equal to the rest of creation, is an example of God’s and our own ambivalence about being the stewards of every other plant and animal species. Noah’s care of the animals, taken in light of permission to eat them, seems to suggest that he owns them and can do what he wants with them. We, like God and our Sages, seem also to be ambivalent about our role as stewards of the rest of creation.
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