Encompassing the Truth in Four Directions

In college, I used to tutor inner city middle school students through an organization called Making Waves. Once during a staff training, I was placed in a group with two Latinx tutors and two black tutors; the other group consisted of five white tutors. When my group playfully accused the supervisors of dividing us up...
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Crying Out Loud

A year ago exactly, we were preparing for our Human Trafficking Awareness Shabbat. The theme resonated so much–as it still does today–with the biblical narrative: Jewish bondage in Egypt. We never expected that a real life sex trafficking case would happen practically on our doorstep. It happened two blocks south of our synagogue, in the...
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On Power, Hope, and Change

A Sermon for Rosh Hashanah, 5772 Rabbi Barbara Penzner   I’d like to start by talking about the movies. Who here has seen “Moneyball”? Who is planning to see it? Good, that means that you may have some idea about the movie. It’s the story of Billy Beane, general manager of the 2002 Oakland Athletics....
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Communities of Practice

What is a community of practice? A T’ruah community of practice will bring together 10-15 chaverim in good standing for shared learning and support as they work to advance human rights in a particular field. Each person is working on the issue independently, in their own rabbinate/cantorate — the group leaning is meant to enhance...
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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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