(M)oral Torah

Holiness is not about attaining some kind of moral and spiritual perfection, but rather cultivating the ability to see and respond to the opportunities to live up to our highest ideals, to build that quality of readiness to meet each moment as it comes.

Freedom is never an end, nor is independence, nor is sovereignty. They are modes of existing in this world that allow us the ability to choose how we act. Are we free of Pharaoh only to set up new Pharaohs of our own? Have we achieved independence and sovereignty only to deny it to others? Have we been released from Egypt to serve ourselves?

I pledge to continue the call to recognize the sanctity of life for all human beings. I vow never to be silent in the face of oppression — no matter how “political” it may seem to some.

Passover is centrally about the possibility that in a moment, things can radically change. Yet, simultaneously, radical change cannot magically stay with us. No event lasts without an intention to integrate its lessons.

Labor is an intersectional value. Our identity as workers must be as indispensable to us as that of once having been slaves in Egypt.

May we hear and take seriously others’ observations of us that we have erred, and may we admit our errors, when we realize them. May our leaders take seriously their obligation to examine their own actions, and to admit and take responsibility for their unwitting mistakes.

The administration is tearing apart the historical narrative of the United States, denying the verifiable truth that more people have been left out of the American dream than included in it, that brutality had a role in building this country, and that we have inherited both the gloriousness of the nation’s founding ideas and the shame of our failure to live up to them.

Repair takes intention and responsibility, while destruction requires nothing but the will to destroy and the means to do it.

The Esther model seeks Jewish safety not by defying the status quo, the power structure, but by sucking up to it. It is safety without freedom. True liberation comes against totalitarian power, not by cozying up to it.

We are living in a terrifying moment to be trans in America. When those in power try to take away your rights, being your authentic self is the most revelatory thing you can do. It is revolutionary and holy work.