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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You Can’t Leave Anyone Behind

I love Israel. But I could never live in a place called “the Jewish homeland” when progressive Jews are treated as second-class citizens. In Israel, the Orthodox establishment controls matters of personal status – primarily conversions and marriages. Jews who wish to be married, religiously, by a Conservative, Reconstructionist, or Reform rabbi generally leave the...
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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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All God’s Creatures Great and Small (Parshat Noach)

The dominion over animals given to humans in Genesis 1:27, compared with the rabbis’ notion that humans were created equal to the rest of creation, is an example of God’s and our own ambivalence about being the stewards of every other plant and animal species. Noah’s care of the animals, taken in light of permission to eat them, seems to suggest that he owns them and can do what he wants with them. We, like God and our Sages, seem also to be ambivalent about our role as stewards of the rest of creation.
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To Transform Our Economic System, We Need to Challenge Inheritance

Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah, the daughters of Zelophehad, recognize and name another crisis, which is that the inheritance laws are set so that families with only daughters are unable to inherit land and instead their families lose their access to land. The five women respond powerfully to the crisis of their father’s death, and a structural shortcoming, with an eye towards intergenerational shifts rather than short-term reform.
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Photo of the author, Rabbi Alanna Sklover

Tzav: We Are the Stranger

We know the heart of the stranger and we cannot allow ourselves to lose sight of these people, or allow statistics to blur them and their lives into a faceless “issue.”
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The Holiness of Dwelling

“I am a nester,” my friend said just weeks before Pesach, as we pondered the ramifications of her house having been dismantled for mold remediation. Her home is sacred space for her, a place set apart to replenish herself. Normally, she would have been cooking up a storm in her house. Instead, we baked a...
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