Photo of the author, Rabbi Sarah Weissman

Ki Tetze: Safety and Dignity for All Workers

The Torah teaches us that we have a special duty, not only to avoid exploiting, but to actively care for the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities. As we celebrate Labor Day, let us do all we can to ensure that every person [especially immigrant workers] can live and work in safety and dignity.

Responsibility, Guilt, Teshuva

Sources and guiding questions to help inspire and support Jewich clergy as they bring the ethical teachings of our tradition to their communities this High Holiday season.

Changing the Conversation: A Resource for Israel and Palestine Education

Want to read this resource as a pdf? Download here. What is this resource? In this moment of heartbreak, overwhelm, and moral reckoning, many of us are searching for ways to have authentic conversations about the realities on the ground in Israel and Palestine. So many in our communities are yearning to connect with people...

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Photo of the author, Rabbi Suzanne Singer

Nitzavim: Interrogating the Society We Build

by Rabbi Suzanne Singer
We must continuously strive to implement justice, as it is so easy to backslide when our attention and our resolve falter. Even during a time of war, when we are at our most vulnerable, we must still check ourselves to see if our conduct is as moral as possible.
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Rabbi Rena Blumenthal

Nitzavim-Vayeilech: To Examine the Past Unflinchingly, We Need Community

by Rabbi Rena Blumenthal
Looking back can be terrifying. We are further protected by being a part of the covenantal community, thus we can look back safely, unflinchingly, to the very real horrors that have shaped our communities and our lives.
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Two Decades Later

by Albert Fox Cahn and Zachary Silver
Two decades later, it is easier to see how we were tempted by the idols of that time, but it is still hard to recognize the idols of today. We remember the sheer panic of 19 years ago, and how we longed for someone — anyone — to make us feel safe again. Those who told us that we need only sacrifice a bit of our liberty for safety often gave us neither. Looking back, we remember just how hollow those promises were.
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Lo Bashamayim Hi: Torah is Not in Heaven

by Rabbi Beth Janus
Moses, our resolute, irascible, courageous, and humble leader, is desperate. Moments before his death, he gathers us. He implores us to follow Torah. He forcefully argues that each one of us is vital in this covenant with Torah and the Holy One. Wanting to have a voice far into the future, Moses makes the covenant...
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Atem Nitzavim: Standing Together Against Hunger

by Rabbi Erin Glazer
Imagine the scene. Groups of men, from tribal leaders to woodchoppers and water-drawers, standing in the same place. Elders interspersed with officials and women with babies on their hips. Children running in and out, weaving between the people, even the stranger within the camp, all gathered together on this day. Atem Nitzavim. You stand this...
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Who Stands With You?

by Rabbi Barbara Penzner
Early one Friday morning in June, I stood with a group of hotel housekeepers who were about to do something very brave. Returning from a one-day strike, as a protest against unsafe working conditions, they feared retaliation. Juan Carlos was selected to be the first worker to punch the clock at 7 am, hoping that...
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Intimacy With God Requires Human Contact

by Rabbinal Student Salem Pearce
Parshat Nitzavim, the first of this week’s double parshah, speaks powerfully to our fundamental human need for connection to each other and to Gd — and therefore to the isolation that is an anathema to it. The covenant of Torah that began with the distant and dramatic display of Gd’s power at Mount Sinai is...
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