Interest Free

It was not what one might call a typical Jewish family. She was a single mother with three children. One was a teenager and two were under five years old. Each child had a different father and the woman was living on SSI. The teenager had gone through our religious school and was now attending...
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Fighting For Fair Food At the Trader Joe’s Headquarters

Note from T'ruah: Thanks to the pressure from CIW, T'ruah, and tens of thousands of allies, Trader Joe's joined the Fair Food Program in February, 2012. We include this d'var torah on our website as a reminder of how taking action on a campaign for justice can bring about lasting change.
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Isaac, Ishmael, Hebron, and Us (Parshat Chayei Sarah)

Commentary on Parshat Chayei Sarah (Genesis 23:1 – 25:18) וַיִּקְבְּר֨וּ אֹת֜וֹ יִצְחָ֤ק וְיִשְׁמָעֵאל֙ בָּנָ֔יו אֶל־מְעָרַ֖ת הַמַּכְפֵּלָ֑ה… And they buried him [Abraham], Isaac and Ishmael his sons, in the Cave of Machpelah … (Genesis 25:9) Isaac and Ishmael only appear together in one line of the Torah portion Chayei Sarah, when they meet in Hebron to...
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The Essence of Being a Jew

That’s Kedoshim’s point – that those of us who own land (and its modern equivalent, a bank account) have an undeniable responsibility to support those who don’t. 
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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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Consuming With Kedusha

With this week’s parashah, Vayikra, we enter the culturally foreign world of Leviticus. It’s hard to resist the impulse to tune out. Vayikra takes us into a thicket of rituals and laws about animal sacrifices, skin diseases, moldy eruptions, purity status, and . . . have I lost you? Wait! With a little cultural translation,...
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Believing in Things We Have Never Seen

“Hope is essential to our capacity to create justice. We have to believe in things we have never seen.” These are the words of Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an advocacy group that opposes mass incarceration and racial injustice. In the face of the racially motivated murder of nine...
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