Headshot of Rabbi Jay LeVine

Tetzaveh: Meet the Darkness with a Persistent Light

We need each other’s lights. A friend, colleague, or ally — perhaps even those we consider adversaries — have the sacred potential to ignite in us the lamp of tamid consciousness and the willingness to widen our circles and give ourselves to the tasks of care, compassion, advocacy, and love.
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Eish Zarah: The Feeling of Being Foreign

I had never been inside Perth Amboy’s quaint, two room art gallery on the outskirts of this heavily Hispanic town in Central New Jersey. What brought me inside at this moment, nearly four years after I moved to Perth Amboy to be the rabbi of Congregation Beth Mordecai, the remaining synagogue in town, was not...
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May Your Clothes Never Wear Out

This d’var Torah is sponsored by Bob Rottenberg in honor of his good friend and sofer, Rabbi Kevin Hale of Western Massachusetts, for above-and-beyond work reconstructing his aging tefillin.  It was torture wandering in the desert, those forty years, and the Israelites let everyone know it. Over and over, throughout the books of Exodus and Numbers,...
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Justice and Compassion (Parshat Shoftim)

Commentary on Parshat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9) Parshat Shoftim opens with the injunction of setting judges and officers within your gates (Deut. 16:18). The proximity of Parshat Shoftim to the month of Elul has given way to an interesting inner connection, brought by several Hasidic masters (Avodat Israel, Devarim, Shoftim 1 ; Sefat Emet,...
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Reaching Past Our Boundaries

Commentary on Parshat Metzora (Leviticus 14:1 – 15:33) One of the most powerful experiences I had during my rabbinic training was serving as a hospital chaplain. I practiced chaplaincy with a group of five other people on the path to becoming clergy of various faiths, and we were trained by a supervisor – an ordained...
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