Every Person Counts? (Parshat Bamidbar)

Commentary on Parshat Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) Our Torah portion opens with the taking of another census of B’nai Yisrael – the Children of Israel – this time “listed by their clans, ages 20 years and up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms…” (Num. 1:2) This is census number three since the...
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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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Building Structures to House All Images of God

It is incumbent upon us to create spaces for God to come into the world. I would add, if we are not doing everything we can to create structures to house all holy human beings, then we are not doing our part in imitating godliness. 
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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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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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Hearts and Mines

There is a delightful tale from Afghanistan of a Jew who went out into the world in order to fulfill the commandment, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The man was certain that somewhere justice must exist, so he spent his life searching for it. He visited faraway villages, great cities, fields and farms, but still...
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Doubled Justice, Single Planet

“Justice, justice you shall pursue.” (Deut.16:20) Perhaps no words from Torah are more famous, or more fully express the fundamental passion of Judaism for justice – justice for the poor, the widow, the orphan – for all those whom society might otherwise reject. Justice is even considered “more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice” (Prov....
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