Hope and a Listening Ear

I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. (Exodus 6:5) It seems these days I have an endless array of guest speakers in my congregation: about the Syrian refugee crisis, about the death penalty, about homelessness, about the violence fraying...
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A Commitment to Justice Means Remembering Our Tribes

But whether or not the Sinai wilderness was ever ownerless as the midrash suggests, in North America, the so-called wildernesses never have been. Those places — and indeed every square mile of North America — have always been, and continue to be, the home of specific tribes of Indigenous peoples.
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The Fugitive and the Path-Seeker (Parshat Ki Tavo)

Commentary on Parshat Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1 – 29:8) “…My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation” (Deut. 26:5). This verse constitutes the kernel of the Passover Haggadah. When we tell our freedom story, we start...
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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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Birth, Visibility, and Justice

Ishah ki tazria. Parshat Tazria opens with laws related to a woman giving birth. The Torah’s terse account of birth screams out for interpretation, for filling in the space between these black letters with the many, and varied, experiences of birth. These stories are so necessary because people are often blind to experiences of birth,...
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In Time of Upheaval: Wonder & Awe OR Wealth & Wall?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that there are two ways of being in the world: “the way of expediency” and “the way of wonder.” In the former, we seek to take what we can from the world and others; in the latter, our focus is on how we can serve. When we are driven by...
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