Resources
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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.
“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.
Holy Disruption
You could imagine the look on people’s faces when a group of rabbis, donned in kippot and talitot, walked into their Publix Supermarket in Florida this past December. On a delegation to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in their fight for dignity and human rights for Florida tomato farmers, we went to the...
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Let Us See Your Goodness
On the heels of the great sin of Israel–worshipping an oversized molten calf while Moses took “so long coming down from the mountain” (Exodus 32)–Moses implores God not to desert the Israelites. “See, You tell me, ‘lead this people forward’ but you have not told me whom You will send with me. If You Yourself...
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The Voice of God
The image of God—tzelem Elohim—is often front and center in animating Jewish human rights work. The recent release of the movie Exodus: Gods and Kings (which, admittedly, I have not seen) gave me pause to contemplate the tzelem’s counterpart—the voice of God. Director Ridley Scott is taking some flak for casting 11-year-old Isaac Andrews as...
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My trip to Immokalee
CONGREGATION SHA’AREI KODESH 2nd Day of Passover MARCH 27, 2013 © RABBI LOUIS RIESER Hag kasher v’Sameah. I want to thank Rabbi Baum for this invitation to speak about my experience in Immokalee with T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. In January I joined 9 other rabbis to learn first-hand about the conditions...
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Hearing the Cry of Oppression
We often read the biblical narrative of slavery as a relic of our past. However, as consumers in a global economy we unwittingly utilize products tainted by slavery every day. In 2011, a group of workers from the New York State Fair appeared at a health clinic near Syracuse, New York with malnutrition. It turned...
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