Opening the Narrow Straits with Advance Care Planning

We have come to the end of Genesis, and with it the conclusion of the stories of our matriarchs and patriarchs. For the last several weeks we have been engaged with the stories of the children of Jacob, focusing mainly on his favored son, Joseph. Now Joseph is on his deathbed. We are privy to...
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Believing in Things We Have Never Seen

“Hope is essential to our capacity to create justice. We have to believe in things we have never seen.” These are the words of Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an advocacy group that opposes mass incarceration and racial injustice. In the face of the racially motivated murder of nine...
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A Prayer for Ferguson

Help us to lie down, Dear Lord our God, in peace, and let us rise again, to life… This summer, I heard that a young black man had been killed by a police officer. The sad thing is that I tuned the story out. I was too caught up in whatever I was doing to...
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The Pharaohs of Contemporary Politics

Passover is often referred to as a holiday of Freedom and Justice. One of the most common Biblical quotes when referring to the mitzvah of tzeddek/Justice, Freedom, and Passover is found in Dt. 16:20: “Tzeddek tzeddek tirdof. Justice, Justice shall you pursue.” This verse, of course, assumes you know what justice is so you can...
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The Voice of God

The image of God—tzelem Elohim—is often front and center in animating Jewish human rights work. The recent release of the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings (which, admittedly, I have not seen) gave me pause to contemplate the tzelem’s counterpart—the voice of God. Director Ridley Scott is taking some flak for casting 11-year-old Isaac Andrews as...
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The Shield of Abraham Will Not Guarantee Our Righteousness

Human beings are very good at justifying war and all of the human rights abuses that war involves. We are easily convinced of the righteousness of our causes, and we eagerly seek reassurance that the innocent lives that our militaries have destroyed must not have been so innocent at all. One can see such desires...
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A Feminist Lens on the Story of Sarah and Hagar

Many people around the world consider Genesis Chapter 16 of this week’s parasha—describing Hagar’s marriage to Avram, her pregnancy and her ill-treatment by Sarai—to be a glimpse of things to come in relations between Jews and Muslims, even between Israelis and Palestinians.  While this perception distorts the long history of Jewish-Muslim relations through history, the...
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Singing at the Sea, Planting on the Mountain

“Shabbat Shirah” is so-named because its reading contains Shirat Ha-Yam, the Song of the Sea. In biblical Hebrew, the word shirah usually denotes a poem rather than music or strophic song in its commonly-known modern Hebrew sense. Many congregations use this opportunity to create special musical programming, taking the latter translation of “Shabbat of Song.”...
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Private Prisons, God’s People

A number of years ago my husband’s nephew suggested that we invest some funds with him in high-risk high-yield bonds. We did. After earning a good return, I asked my husband what his nephew had done with our money. He answered that his nephew, among other ventures, had invested in for-profit prisons. I was horrified....
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