Resources

We need each other’s lights. A friend, colleague, or ally — perhaps even those we consider adversaries — have the sacred potential to ignite in us the lamp of tamid consciousness and the willingness to widen our circles and give ourselves to the tasks of care, compassion, advocacy, and love.

A self-proclaimed “melting pot,” a country that declared its independence by asserting that all men are created equal, should continue to be a sanctuary and refuge.

These 7 divrei Torah, one for each of the 7 weeks of the Omer that lead up to Shavuot, span the breadth of the entire Torah, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, and come from 7 exceptional T'ruah rabbis who lend their voices to the call for a more just and moral world.

T'ruah's haggadah helps transform the seder into a conversation about immigration, racism, workers' rights, and forced labor.

If America is to be the land of the free, a melting pot of diversity and equality, it too must clear the stones from the proverbial roads and build up pathways for immigrants, especially refugees and asylum-seekers.

I can imagine a situation where Noah’s gut instinct was to just follow God, but I cannot fathom how he just sat there as the rain started to fall and didn’t do anything to try to save anyone. 

...as we learn from Leviticus, for communal sin there can be expiation. The process begins not with bringing a bull to the sanctuary, but with a commitment to learn history, and a commitment to ensure that history is learned by others.

Strategically, we stand a better chance of finding our way if we do not dismiss (other's) capacity for moral reasoning. We stand a better chance of moving their hearts if we assume they have one. 

...the Torah teaches us that the particular and the universal are inextricably intertwined. Just as we need partners in the fight against antisemitism, we must use our power to become partners to others in the fights for social, racial, and economic justice. As the Talmud says, ​​even a poor person who is sustained from tzedakah must also perform tzedakah (Gittin 7b). When we feel the fragility of our power, when we feel we need help, even then – precisely then – we must share what we have with others.

A D’var Torah for Parshat Miketz by Rabbi Ruven Barkan This summer, as we lived through the social upheaval fueled by COVID-19 and sparked by police brutality, I began to recognize more clearly the passive yet growing isolation and alienation between Jewish and African-American communities. (Recognizing, of course, that these are not mutually exclusive categories...