Atem Nitzavim: Standing Together Against Hunger

Imagine the scene. Groups of men, from tribal leaders to woodchoppers and water-drawers, standing in the same place. Elders interspersed with officials and women with babies on their hips. Children running in and out, weaving between the people, even the stranger within the camp, all gathered together on this day. Atem Nitzavim. You stand this...
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Jacob the Immigrant

On October 5, supporters of immigration reform staged rallies in cities across the United States to advocate for a comprehensive overhaul of a system that routinely disregards basic dignity and respect. After Shabbat services that week, some congregants and I attended the New York-area rally on Cadman Plaza, just steps from our shul. When we...
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Yovel Text Study: 50 Years

We don’t know exactly when the Yovel year begins. It’s the culmination of seven cycles of seven years, each culminating in a sh’mitah—sabbatical—year. The only way to arrive at Yovel is to count seven years, then seven again and again until forty-nine years have gone by. Similarly, the Torah never tells us precisely when to...
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A Yovel for the Poor People’s Campaign (Parshat Behar/Bechukotai)

Commentary on Parshat Behar/Bechukotai (Leviticus 25:1 – 27:34) One week from today, Monday May 14, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival will launch across this country. As I prepare for this momentous event, I’m struck by the alignment of Torah and sacred season. This Shabbat when we read of the yovel...
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Purell, Red Heifers, and Why Not Being Racist Isn’t Enough

And at some point, I looked down at my hands and my children’s hands, spotless from washing, no dirt under our nails, and I thought about the historical chain of racist violence and state-sanctioned brutality that our hands grasped. Our social system makes certainty of our cleanliness an impossibility. Quite the opposite: we are all unclean, no matter how much we may have washed.
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Circumcised Hearts and Stiff Necks

...when we circumcise our hearts we can then turn our necks outward to the world, vulnerable, nakedly open to the experiences of others. The internal work cannot be separated from the work of changing the world, of standing shoulder to shoulder with those who are oppressed. We cannot have one without the other.
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