Photo of the author, Rabbi Lana Zilberman Soloway

Bamidbar: Lispor and Lesaper

by Rabbi Lana Zilberman Soloway
We have been counting the days since October 7, counting the unbearable number of lost lives, counting the number of hostages, counting the number of people who became refugees in their own land. We count and we count and we count. And we tell a story. Each and every one of us.
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Bamidbar: Finding God in the Wilderness

by Cantor Shoshana Brown
That the Torah addresses the concerns that civilization inevitably brings, along with awareness of the need for individuals to experience God in wilderness, seems to me a profound grappling with the needs both of human beings and of God’s non-human world.
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What Does Shavuot Have to Do With Justice?

by Rabbi Lane Steinger
The best way to celebrate the sixth of Sivan might well be to engage in some activity on behalf of the poor or the stranger or in some justice-oriented project or endeavor. That’s what I plan to do.
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A Commitment to Justice Means Remembering Our Tribes

by Rabbi Josh Weisman
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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Each Person, A Letter of Torah

by Rabbi Kimberly Herzog Cohen
Rabbi Kimberly Herzog Cohen writes on Bamidbar and making every person count.
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Every Person Counts? (Parshat Bamidbar)

by Rabbi Enid C. Lader
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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The Myth of Jewish Unity

by Rabbi Aaron Potek
We American Jews are a divided people living in a divided nation. The natural and common response to such division is a call for unity. While unity in theory is a noble aspiration, the call for unity among a group of people often reflects a dangerous and anti-Jewish desire to erase or ignore differences. The...
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Parashat Bamidbar: The Imperative to Provide Refuge

by Rabbi Elli Sarah Tikvah
My father’s family were refugees from Vienna, who fled just before World War II broke out, but not before my grandfather had been deported to Dachau. He remained incarcerated there from November 13, 1938, until January 19, 1939. He knew he had to leave Austria with his family. But leaving wasn’t easy. First, it meant...
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