My trip to Immokalee

CONGREGATION SHA’AREI KODESH 2nd Day of Passover MARCH 27, 2013 ©  RABBI LOUIS RIESER   Hag kasher v’Sameah. I want to thank Rabbi Baum for this invitation to speak about my experience in Immokalee with T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.  In January I joined 9 other rabbis to learn first-hand about the conditions...
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Stop Torture Now: A Complete Rabbinic Sourcebook

This is T’ruah’s primary resource booklet on government-sponsored torture, originally published in 2005. It includes the shorter versions of Rabbi Melissa Weintraub’s articles on torture and Jewish law, insertions for High Holidays services, materials for study and discussion, and the original public letter to the Bush Administration, signed by over 800 rabbis and cantors. The full-length versions...
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Signposts for a Troubling Future

Visiting Hebron, one of the first impressions that hits like a sucker-punch to the stomach is of a ghost town. Streets once bustling with thousands of Palestinians are now traversed almost exclusively by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Freedom of movement is squashed. Palestinian doors are welded shut and porches are caged in, ostensibly to protect...
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Migrants on God’s Land

That’s how I found myself chanting and marching, yelling to children that they were not forgotten, that they were loved – while holding the hand of my youngest son, whom I love so much it hurts. Having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside of your body.
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Parashat Bamidbar: The Imperative to Provide Refuge

My father’s family were refugees from Vienna, who fled just before World War II broke out, but not before my grandfather had been deported to Dachau. He remained incarcerated there from November 13, 1938, until January 19, 1939. He knew he had to leave Austria with his family. But leaving wasn’t easy. First, it meant...
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A Time for Realism, or a Time for Imagination?

For many of us, we anticipate that this week will be full of so much change and upheaval, fear and anger, anxiety and sadness, and hopefully also motivation and drive to act. So how do we respond in the face of great challenge? Our Israelite ancestors certainly faced some pretty trying circumstances, so what can...
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