Resources
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High Holiday Sermon Resource: On Settler Violence & State Violence
Use these clergy resources to help your community make a narrative shift: expanding beyond rightful condemnation of settler violence to seeing and working against the violence of the occupation and settlement projects as a whole.
Responsibility, Guilt, Teshuva
Sources and guiding questions to help inspire and support Jewish clergy as they bring the ethical teachings of our tradition to their communities this High Holiday season.
Antisemitism & Immigration: A Messaging Guide for Jewish Clergy
When the fight against antisemitism is used to harm immigrants, rabbis and cantors can be powerful voices to describe what’s at play and advocate for and inspire action towards our shared safety.
Everybody Hurts: Learning from Leviticus to Reclaim Public Ritual Repentance
In this d'var Torah for Parshat Vayikra, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie examines our ancient tools for healing transgressions.
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And they Assembled
A prayer for Shabbat Vayakhel-Pekudei 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Restoring the Dignity of Refugees Should Be Part of Living in a Democracy
Sabrina Lustgarten, Country Director for HIAS in Ecuador, writes that Parshat Vayakhel emphasizes "the importance of harmonizing wills to achieve a common good."
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What’s So Bad About the Golden Calf?
In this d'var Torah for Parshat Ki Tisa, Daniel Handler struggles with symbols that become more important than morals.
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Prayer for Healing During COVID-19
Harachaman, Compassionate One, You are “rofeh chol basar umafli la’asot,” healer of bodies, who does wondrous deeds. The wondrous bodies that You have made for us now feel more fragile. The openings by which we perceive Your world now feel more vulnerable. We are anxious and frightened by the uncertainty of what is to come....
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Great Leaders Know When To Step Back
Parshat Tetzaveh is perhaps most noteworthy in the Torah for what it lacks: any mention of the name of Moses.
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When We Make Art Together, We Dream a Better World Into Existence
A d’var Torah for Terumah (Ex.25:1-27:19) by Caroline Rothstein. I am an artist. That’s been my identity, purpose, and path since I was three years old and slid on ballet shoes to dance across a recital stage. Then came poetry. And nonfiction prose. Then came singing, acting, musical theater, jazz and modern and hip-hop dance,...
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Choosing a Life-Giving Narrative
In this week’s d’var torah on Parshat Mishpatim, Judith Plaskow notes that it is easy to focus on those passages in the Torah that are inspiring and uplifting, or to depict US history as a continuing march toward equality and freedom, passing over in silence the aspects of both narratives that are troubling or oppressive.
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T’ruah FAQ on the U.N. Database of Businesses that Operate in Israeli Settlements
The U.N. released a database of 112 businesses currently operating in West Bank settlements, which are considered illegal according to international law.
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Democracy: Remembering Where We Are Going
A d’var Torah for Yitro (Ex.18:1-20:23) by Rabbi Gordon Tucker. The Book of Eikhah (Lamentations) contains this apparently oxymoronic phrase when speaking of how ancient Judea had lost its moral way: “It did not remember its future” (1:9). What could it mean to remember something that is not in the past? The usual ways of...
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