Resources
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...
Our Best Leaders May Be Those with the Least Power
A d’var Torah for Parshat Beha’alotecha by Matt Nosanchuk. Leadership lies at the center of our Jewish communal discourse, and rightfully so. Through tough times biblical, historical, and present, Jews have relied on a wide range of leaders, including patriarchs and matriarchs, kings and queens, prophets and prime ministers, soldiers and scholars, and, of course,...
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Counting everyone, including the stranger, for the 2020 Census
A d’var Torah for Parshat Naso. “The Eternal one spoke to Moses: Take a census.” This week’s Torah portion, Naso, focuses on one of the multiple censuses that was carried out, the census of the Levites in the desert. This year in the U.S. is our year to carry out the census — to be...
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Listening Leads to Understanding, Which Leads to God
A d'var Torah for Shavuot by Congressman Jerry Nadler, originally published in 2020.
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Yom Yerushalayim Obscures The Reality of Modern Jerusalem
A d’var Torah for Yom Yerushalayim by Daniel Seidemann. Jerusalem Day, Yom Yerushalayim, which is this coming Friday, was created by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, the Rabbanut, in the wake of the 1967 war, and subsequently enshrined as a national holiday under law. A religious commemoration of the “reunification” of Jerusalem when Hallel is said,...
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It’s Not Enough to “Proclaim Liberty.” We Have to Do the Work.
In this d'var Torah for Behar-Bechukotai, Rabbi Sally Priesand draws connections between the Liberty Bell and other symbols and ensuring liberty in civic life.
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Texts for shiur on Torah and annexation collected by Rabbi David J. Cooper
These texts were collected for a webinar on Torah and annexation for chaverim.
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“We Were All Once Strangers”: Emor and Inclusivity
A d’var Torah for Emor from community organizer Cole Parke. Coming out is a defining experience for most every queer person I know. This month marks 15 years since I first shared that part of myself publicly, and these days it’s a deeply integrated part of my identity — something that is far from secret,...
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Loving Israel with all of my Jewishness: A Photo Essay
In words and photographs, activist Gili Getz explores his complex relationship with the State of Israel. A d'var Torah for Parshat Kedoshim and Yom HaAtzma'ut.
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Lessons for Democracy from the Holocaust
A d’var Torah for Yom HaShoah. In many respects, World War II seemed like a triumph of democracy. When the Allies defeated the Axis powers, the world celebrated that democratic nations had been victorious against fascism. On May 8, 1945, Victory Day, Americans danced in the streets and threw confetti from the rooftops to celebrate...
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“Now We Are Free”: But Who Pays the Price?
A d’var Torah for Chol HaMoed Pesach. “Let My people go,” God famously said to Moses. We usually don’t finish the quote, which ends “…so that they may serve Me.” Freedom, the rabbis say quite plainly, is another kind of servitude. The cheirut, freedom, that the Jews achieved on Passover (z’man cheiruteinu, the time of...
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