Bamidbar: Finding God in the Wilderness

That the Torah addresses the concerns that civilization inevitably brings, along with awareness of the need for individuals to experience God in wilderness, seems to me a profound grappling with the needs both of human beings and of God’s non-human world.
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Reckoning With the Harm We’ve Caused

According to the Netziv, the brit is meant as a healing salve. God knows the ways committing acts of violence may leave a permanent scar on those who commit them. Perhaps God is speaking from experience. 
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Behar: Getting from Here to There

We are returning from the mountain to the plains; from our highest ideals to the practicalities of daily living; from the most fundamental expression of holiness to where we are now.
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Photo of the author, Maetal Gerson

Chukat: Leading and Listening

Facing the climate change disaster means facing one another with respect and sincere empathy. Only then can we manage the amount of work it will take to fix that in which each of us has a stake.
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A Shemoneh-Esreh for Israel

In 2016/5776, T’ruah gathered in front of the Israeli Consulate in New York City to celebrate Yom HaAtzma’ut. The core of the service was a series of 19 blessings for the State of Israel, modeled on the weekday Amidah that Jews traditionally recite three times a day. Each blessing was written by a rabbi, cantor, or...
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How to Make Our Racial Equity Commitments Endure

Listening to (the shofar's) blasts, we hold so many good intentions about the year to come... That is why the robust structures for anti-racism work... are so important. They give us a path to walk, a process to follow, and so they seek to avoid backsliding into complacency.
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Rabbi Jill Jacobs headshot

Taking Time: A Resource for Shabbat by Rabbi Jill Jacobs

God, according to the Torah, created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. This doesn’t mean that the world was perfect at the end of the sixth day of creation. Rather, God models the necessity of taking just one day to experience the world as it is, while acknowledging our own limitations in perfecting it.
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2013 Rabbinic Letter on Bedouin Rights

In 2013, nearly 800 rabbis, cantors, and rabbinical and cantorial students signed this letter, which was delivered to the Israeli government. As spiritual and Jewish community leaders who care deeply about the State of Israel, we write to you in solidarity with concerned Jewish and Arab Israelis to urge you to withdraw the Bill on...
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