Hearing and Hearing Out

If you’re like me, the intractable status quo between Israel and the Palestinians is really getting you down. Ever since Yitzhak Rabin’s handshake with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn nearly 24 years ago, my heart has been given over to the Oslo accords. An Israel and a Palestine, existing side by side in...
read more

Senseless Hatred Among Us

On the 9th of Av, 5772, I had to attend the wake of a close friend who died suddenly at the age of 24. It was the first time I ever fasted on Tisha B’Av. I wasn’t raised with any observance or even knowledge, really, of the day, and even as I became more observant...
read more

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,...
read more

The Times They Are Not A-Changing

Our Torah is a unique holy book and it is like none other. The torah takes us on a journey towards the Promised Land, but we never get there. The people who are in charge of our journey fail in their attempts at leadership. Our Torah portrays our leaders as fallible, mortal, and prone to...
read more

The Binary Brothers (Parshat Toldot)

Commentary on Parshat Toldot (Genesis 25:19 – 28:9) This week’s Torah portion, Toldot, tells the story of twin brothers who were labeled from the moment they were born, and the consequences have reverberated throughout our history. Jacob, the heel-grabbing younger brother who tried to prevent his sibling from emerging from the womb first was the...
read more

Miracle Of Miracles (Chanukah)

Commentary on Shabbat Chanukah I’ve always had a problem with the familiar Chanukah story, which highlights the Maccabees’ unlikely victory over the Greeks and the kindling of the menorah from one jar of oil that lasted eight nights. “Miraculous war” surely represents a quintessential definition of oxymoron; a jar of oil burning for eight nights...
read more

Envisioning a Just Society

In parshat Ki Tetze we encounter the case of the ben sorer u’moreh, the wayward and rebellious son. We read in Devarim 21:18-21 that if a child does not obey his mother and father they should bring him out to the gates of the city before a council of elders, publicly declare him a glutton...
read more

Safe Homes. Healthy Relationships. Strong Women.

A number of years ago, my good friend Shira and I dressed up for Purim festivities on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My costume consisted of platform sandals, bell-bottoms, and a bohemian tunic, my hair parted down the middle and secured with a colorful head-band. Shira wore blue jeans, a tiara, and a black...
read more

Holy Disruption

You could imagine the look on people’s faces when a group of rabbis, donned in kippot and talitot, walked into their Publix Supermarket in Florida this past December. On a delegation to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in their fight for dignity and human rights for Florida tomato farmers, we went to the...
read more

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...
read more

Sign up for updates and action alerts