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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Rabbi Karen Bender and HUC student Samantha Thal

Sukkot: Sukkot and the Human Right of Dwelling Safely

Perhaps Sukkot is the festival of understanding our journey, for journeys have no concrete and steel foundations, only earth and sandy feet. And the yearning that should come out of this collective memory must be a passionate commitment to end homelessness everywhere, physical, spiritual, or national.
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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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U.S. Fellows

The T’ruah Rabbinical and Cantorial Student Summer Fellowship in Human Rights offers a select cohort of rabbinical/cantorial students an eight week experience working in a human rights/social justice organization in New York, learning about human rights in Jewish text and tradition, and gaining the skills to be human rights leaders in your own communities. Learn...
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The Wilderness of Homelessness and a Way Forward

I imagine the Israelites showing the same expression of confusion and disbelief as those families who realize that they have just lost their homes and that their lives have just been upended: not knowing to whom to turn and where to go because of a system that is not built to support them. At least in the story of the Exodus, God has other plans.
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