Resources
VaEra: And God Spoke
…I am a refugee. I am an immigrant. I am a person of color. I am a transgender person…
[These] words become more than just words when we know that it was YHVH who spoke them.
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Vayigash: Hope in Incomplete Redemptions
Although makhlokot (disagreements) stem from forgetting the Torah, Torah thrives and expands as we argue, trying to uncover its truths. When we have different truths, we increase the Torah in the world, and thus beautify it.
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A JEWISH EMBRACE OF DEMOCRACY: Early Reconstructionist Judaism and America’s Promise
Rabbi Deborah Waxman reflects on what Jewish tradition has to say about democratic practice.
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NARRATING OUR HISTORIES IN SOLIDARITY: Lessons from the Civil Rights Congress
New work by scholar Geoffrey Adelsberg, PhD 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.
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Chanukah: Spread Love and Righteousness
The Chanukah lights are intended for people on the “outside” — those on the margins. The internal practice of Chanukah is to turn outward and examine how we help illuminate God’s holiness for people on the outside of our society.
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Vayeshev, Yosef’s brothers, and Gaza
"More and more I begin to believe that we are as defined by those calls for help we do not answer as by those calls that we do."
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“THEY FOUGHT BACK, USING EVERYTHING THEY HAD AVAILABLE”: Democracy and Theology in Independent Afro-Jewish Communities
A conversation between Rabbi Walter Isaac, PhD, and Rabbi Koach Baruch Frazier on the role of Black Judaic communities in innovating democratic ideals in the Americas.
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Vayetze: Remembering Jacob outside Home Depot
Laban is happy to use Jacob as a worker and use his own children as tools to extract more value from Jacob, all while telling himself a comforting narrative that he is just doing what is right in his country.
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Chayei Sara: Raise your Voice for Justice
We’re connected to each other in surprising ways, even during this time of disruption and loss.
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Civil Disobedience, Jews, and the Authoritarian State
The following is the first in T’ruah’s new thought leadership series, “Tekiyah Gedolah.” In a time of mounting authoritarianism in the United States, we must use the wisdom of our tradition to help us think through how to fight for democracy as diaspora Jews. How does our tradition guide us to respond to our present...
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