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No Shortcuts to Liberation, Alas
In this week's d'var torah on Parshat Shemot, NYC Councilman Brad Lander draws connections between patterns of oppression and resistance then and now.
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Paying Priests, Paying Parents
This past weekend, many of us celebrated Father’s Day to honor the important work our dads do. A month ago, we did the same thing to honor our mothers: BBQs and brunches, phone calls and cards in the mail, “Number 1 Mom” mugs and “World’s Best Dad” baseball caps. As a congregational rabbi, I spend...
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Opening the Door at Passover
At the first Passover, we marked our doorposts with the blood of a sacrificial lamb to protect us from the Angel of Death (Exodus 12:23). Although that was a one-time ritual, doors continue to be a central symbol of the holiday. It is a symbol that seems more relevant than ever in an age when nativism...
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Re’eh: See Immokalee with your own eyes and you’ll understand
See. Re’eh. Much of Sefer Devarim instructs us to listen—Shma. Listening is one important way that people understand and empathize with the stories of others. When we hear or read these from afar, we feel great empathy and outrage. But in our portion, the mitzvot we are called to fulfill require that we see life’s...
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Joseph and His Amazing Technocratic Dream Coat: The Descent to Tyranny
I am puzzled by the ways in which a country that readily replaces phones and computers as soon as we experience even the slightest decrease in performance can insist that our inherited system for organizing our economy and government works just fine.
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