To stand for human dignity means not only insisting on the right to basic survival needs, but the right to live fully — to experience joy, pleasure, love, friendship, beauty.
Despite his reservations, [Moses] is able to see that God’s presence illuminates even the most unassuming, seemingly dark and thorny places. May we, with all our insecurities, do the same.
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 path of peace is not an easy one; it cuts through the binary of right or wrong, victim or oppressor, hero or villain, us or them. The path of peace does not choose favorites, does not leverage one over another, does not create hierarchies. The path of peace has no sides.
Rabbi Sid Schwarz is a social entrepreneur, author and teacher. He created and directs the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), a program that trains rabbis to be visionary spiritual leaders. He also created and directs the Kenissa: Communities of Meaning Network which is building the capacity of emerging spiritual communities across the country. Both projects are...
We are creatures of story—it’s how we make sense of ourselves in the world. So it is with purpose that Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Torah, begins with our shared story. Our individual stories define our individual identities; our group story, delivered here by Moses, defines us as a People. What seems...
"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."
I had never been inside Perth Amboy’s quaint, two room art gallery on the outskirts of this heavily Hispanic town in Central New Jersey. What brought me inside at this moment, nearly four years after I moved to Perth Amboy to be the rabbi of Congregation Beth Mordecai, the remaining synagogue in town, was not...
The Israelites’ Egyptian bondage was Joseph’s fault. Ok, I admit, the Egyptians were directly to blame. But Joseph’s economic reforms laid the foundation for the enslavement. Let me explain. After Jacob and his sons relocated to Egypt, the famine worsened. Joseph oversaw the collection of funds from the people of Egypt in return for rations...