Vayakhel

Commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, we understand that if we fail to see a member of our community, it is because we are not looking for them with enough love.

The Mishkan was not just a compound our ancestors built; it is a state of mind that we can inhabit.

Our movements for justice rely on the ecology of different people and different groups bringing the contributions that make our hearts sing.

"If we want our vaunted “Temple of Democracy” to contain actual holiness, it means we all must be able to build it up." A d'var Torah for Parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei by Amelia Wolf.

A prayer for Shabbat Vayakhel-Pekudei 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sabrina Lustgarten, Country Director for HIAS in Ecuador, writes that Parshat Vayakhel emphasizes "the importance of harmonizing wills to achieve a common good."

Commentary on Parshat Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1 – 38:20) “He made the washbasin of copper and its stand of copper, from the mirrors of the women.” (Exodus 38:8) Parshat Vayakhel describes the mishkan, the portable desert sanctuary, as filled with beautiful items created from donated materials. Near its entrance stood a copper washbasin, a public fountain...

“In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if [they are] denied the opportunity of an education,” U.S Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren declared in the famed case of Board v. Board of Education, almost 64 years ago. Decades later, in 2009, Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan...

In college, I used to tutor inner city middle school students through an organization called Making Waves. Once during a staff training, I was placed in a group with two Latinx tutors and two black tutors; the other group consisted of five white tutors. When my group playfully accused the supervisors of dividing us up...

“I knew something like this was coming,” said the octogenarian with wizened face and farmer’s posture. “I’ve been a township trustee for over 40 years. It used to be that new drilling sites had to be approved by the township. Just a few years ago, the state took our power away. Now they alone can...