Gala 2022 Honoree Committee

Each year, T’ruah honors a group of extraordinary clergy who demonstrate an unwavering commitment to living and working in accordance with a Torah of justice and human rights. And each year we turn to our supporters to help us find these remarkable leaders by nominating their clergy colleagues and friends. Nominations for our 2022 Rabbinic...
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Cleaning up the mess together

One of my favorite programs at my synagogue is our B’nei Mitzvah family retreat. At the beginning of the summer, we take our incoming seventh grade families to camp for the weekend. It’s remarkable: relationships between kids change, parents get to know each other, and, after the Bar or Bat Mitzvah, we keep most of...
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Sacred Noncompliance (Parshat Ki Tisa)

Commentary on Parshat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11 – 34:35) The Golden Calf is one of the most spiritually disturbing incidents in the narrative of the Israelites’ journey through the desert. While Moses is away on the mountain with God, the Israelite camp dissolves into a chaos of mistrust and idol worship under the care of...
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“…It Is My Mouth Speaking To You”

These are the words Joseph spoke to his brothers; words of identification, love and reconciliation. In four Hebrew words (Gen. 45:12), Joseph has bridged an insuperable chasm between his brothers and himself. And in speaking as he did, he closed a chapter about lives marked by separation. There are chasms that mark our lives, keeping...
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A Tale of Two Brothers

The reunion was to take place the next morning. Each of the brothers, alone within his own encampment, struggled with his own fears – and his own memories. Esau, the older, was sure that his younger brother would be up to his old tricks. He remembered how he had done everything his father had asked...
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A Flood of Unsafe Water

On August 31st, 2005, I sat waiting for a connection in Brussels, coming back from a summer studying in Israel. I was about to begin rabbinical school in just a few weeks. TVs streamed footage of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; it was the first I knew of it, having been cut off from most...
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Rabbi Ruhi Sophia Motzkin Rubenstein

VaEra: It’s Our Time to be the Protagonists of History

In this moment, we do not know how things will turn out, in Israel or the U.S. But if Torah and history have anything to teach us, it is that whatever happens is not inevitable, and the catalyst will not be something we could have predicted in advance. This moment, like all moments, is full of possibility. It will be those with proactive vision who will move history, just as it always has been.
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Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson

Beshalach: No More Solitary Confinement in NYC

There is a deep and abiding power in saying to those who have died as a result of solitary confinement. We cannot bring back those we lost, but we can sanctify their memories by continuing to fight for a city that is dedicated to human rights for all.
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