Resources
Yom Kippur: Atoning for Our Patterns
While we don’t make the same mistakes each year, the mistakes we make come from similar places. Repentance is a way of approaching the struggles at the core of our being, rather than just feeling guilt for discrete acts of harm.
Responsibility, Guilt, Teshuva
Sources and guiding questions to help inspire and support Jewish clergy as they bring the ethical teachings of our tradition to their communities this High Holiday season.
A MULTI-ROOTED MOVEMENT: Sephardic Activists and Horizontal Alliances in the Early 20th Century
New scholarly work on how Jews of past generations advanced groundbreaking multiracial coalition work, and what the tensions they faced — including racism within the Jewish community — say about conditions today.
Our Immigrant Ancestor
Avraham Avinu, our common ancestor Abraham, was an immigrant. “Go,” God commands in this week’s portion, “from your land, from your native territory, from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Taking his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and his household members with him, Abram (as he is still named at...
more
“The Part About The Stars”
The girl who will become bat mitzvah in my shul on Parshat Lech Lecha has noted that her special day falls a week before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which members of her family witnessed. So she requested I let her leyn her portion from the Czech “Shoah” scroll in our ark. Those who possess such...
more
A Feminist Lens on the Story of Sarah and Hagar
Many people around the world consider Genesis Chapter 16 of this week’s parasha—describing Hagar’s marriage to Avram, her pregnancy and her ill-treatment by Sarai—to be a glimpse of things to come in relations between Jews and Muslims, even between Israelis and Palestinians. While this perception distorts the long history of Jewish-Muslim relations through history, the...
more
