About three years ago, I was called by the Head Chaplain of the Butner Federal Correction Institution located forty-five minutes north of my home in Raleigh, NC. This is the same penitentiary where (in)famous prisoners like Jonathan Pollard and Bernard Madoff currently reside. The chaplain’s message came with a southern drawl: “Rabbi, we have a...
Only from an open and spacious heart can I experience a connection to what is holy. When I am focused on what I want and need, or when I am filled up with my own sense of righteousness, then what I have created within is actually a Golden Calf instead of my own small sanctuary.
The words we speak may soothe our spiritual and emotional wounds when spoken in kindness, but speech has the potential to “sicken” us, as individuals and as a society when spoken in malice.
Perhaps this midrash holds out a hope that any of us can be transformed to meet the needs of the moment. And perhaps we can find a way to change the course of today’s story so it does not have to end in wholesale destruction.
Jewish stars spray-painted by settlers onto the deserted shops left by Palestinians after they were expelled from Shuhada Street. Bullet holes shot by settlers into the water tanks of Palestinians, who already have erratic and dramatically insufficient water supplies. The palimpsest of “Free Palestine” where settlers have spray painted bold blue stars over the green...
"In this reorientation from one way of doing things to a better one lies the relevance, power, and teaching for our broken criminal justice system today."
There is a delightful tale from Afghanistan of a Jew who went out into the world in order to fulfill the commandment, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The man was certain that somewhere justice must exist, so he spent his life searching for it. He visited faraway villages, great cities, fields and farms, but still...
Chapter one of Breshit presents an account of creation that provides the ontological foundation for human rights. God creates human beings in the divine image. And having done so, God proclaims that the entire creation is “very good.” The great Hasidic teacher the Kedushat Levi, riffing on the line in the morning prayer “yotzer or...
In this week’s Torah portion, parashat Balak, we read the story of the mighty Moabite king Balak, who wants to hire the prophet Bil’am to curse the children of Israel. Balak places increasing pressure upon Bil’am, first through Moabite and Midianite elders, and then through elite princes. Both times Balak sends esteemed men, but God...