Stop Torture Now: A Complete Rabbinic Sourcebook

This is T’ruah’s primary resource booklet on government-sponsored torture, originally published in 2005. It includes the shorter versions of Rabbi Melissa Weintraub’s articles on torture and Jewish law, insertions for High Holidays services, materials for study and discussion, and the original public letter to the Bush Administration, signed by over 800 rabbis and cantors. The full-length versions...
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Signposts for a Troubling Future

Visiting Hebron, one of the first impressions that hits like a sucker-punch to the stomach is of a ghost town. Streets once bustling with thousands of Palestinians are now traversed almost exclusively by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Freedom of movement is squashed. Palestinian doors are welded shut and porches are caged in, ostensibly to protect...
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Migrants on God’s Land

That’s how I found myself chanting and marching, yelling to children that they were not forgotten, that they were loved – while holding the hand of my youngest son, whom I love so much it hurts. Having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside of your body.
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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...
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Sent Out of the Camp

This week’s parashah deals with a somewhat puzzling disease, called tzara’at, often translated as “leprosy.” As the Torah describes it, it’s an affliction that could appear on human skin, on clothes, or even infect houses. It’s not clear if the affliction is truly physical, as Leviticus seems to indicate, or if it’s a physical manifestation of...
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Safe Homes. Healthy Relationships. Strong Women.

A number of years ago, my good friend Shira and I dressed up for Purim festivities on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My costume consisted of platform sandals, bell-bottoms, and a bohemian tunic, my hair parted down the middle and secured with a colorful head-band. Shira wore blue jeans, a tiara, and a black...
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Holy Disruption

You could imagine the look on people’s faces when a group of rabbis, donned in kippot and talitot, walked into their Publix Supermarket in Florida this past December. On a delegation to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in their fight for dignity and human rights for Florida tomato farmers, we went to the...
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