D'var Torah

It is not enough to mourn. Mourning must be accompanied by actions that end the harm being done. 

Israel is too important for us to throw up our hands and turn away, just because it feels like we’re losing. Israel needs us and we need them.

...let us strive to learn from Zelophechad’s daughters, seeking good wherever we can find it.

We find in our tradition that God dwells not in the destruction, but in the moment right before rebuilding.

I like to imagine that Balaam’s words changed us and shook us out of our complaining so that we could see ourselves in a fresh way.

When we escalate from anger to contempt, to what 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described as “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another,” we move our gaze from a person’s actions to their individuality, their personhood.

...if we want the soil of our land to live up to our hopes for it, we must hold to our faith — whether that is in God, in the land itself, or, in our case, the conviction of the cause(s) we are working for — and believe that we will reap the fruits of our labor.

The lights of the menorah in the Mishkan, and in the Temple, led to the ner tamid (eternal light) in our sanctuaries, and to our understanding that each one of us is a light too.

...being in Israel over the last several months has shown me almost daily how easy it is to defile something that’s important to us because of zealotry and jealousy. 

We are called to elevate the difficult truths, and sometimes our complicity in them, in order to “lift them up” for tikkun — for fixing.