Repetition, Compulsion, and Night Vision

Many of us are war-weary and disheartened this week as we open the final book of Torah—Devarim or Deuteronomy. The Rambam called this book Mishneh Torah (repetition of Torah), because so much of it contains Moshe’s retelling of the stories that our ancestors lived out in the 40 years’ walk through the Wilderness. The aged...
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At Our Season of Liberation, Black Lives Matter

Change in the air. Sugar-flecked red, yellow, orange, and green jelled semi-circle slices; macaroons; pounds of nuts; Barton’s tin can almond kisses; overflowing grocery bags. My mother and I shop among the street carts and small shops that dot Blake Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn. Although my family is not observant, the white gold-rimmed...
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“Mishpat Echad”

At the end of parashat Emor, our rabbis focus on a single phrase, “You shall have one justice for the stranger and the citizen alike, I am the Eternal.” (Leviticus 24: 22) We have to ask ourselves: how are we doing upholding the principle of equal justice? Let us begin with the great scholar who...
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The Times They Are Not A-Changing

Our Torah is a unique holy book and it is like none other. The torah takes us on a journey towards the Promised Land, but we never get there. The people who are in charge of our journey fail in their attempts at leadership. Our Torah portrays our leaders as fallible, mortal, and prone to...
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If Only I Had Known, I Would Have Changed For The Better

For the rest of us, it took ground penetrating radar, and other technologies which render the invisible visible, to wake us up. But for the Indigenous communities most directly affected, none of that was needed. The voices we most desperately need to be listening to already knew. They already saw.
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Redigging the wells

In the struggle over democracy, it is not just about big ideas, levers of power, or sums of money: It is about human lives.
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Dream Until It’s Your Reality

Like Jacob’s dream, our justice work must be grounded in this world, absorbing the pain of everyday injustice with our hearts open to those suffering. And yet, our work must remain aspirational, reaching for the sky and not settling for anything less than our basic demands of human dignity and human rights.
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Trampling over the Torah

We should never assume our success is rubber-stamped or approved forever. Our actions can always be re-evaluated, and based on prophetic precedent, God tends to hold us to a higher standard of behavior than our neighbors, not a lower one.
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