Resources

A number of years ago, my good friend Shira and I dressed up for Purim festivities on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My costume consisted of platform sandals, bell-bottoms, and a bohemian tunic, my hair parted down the middle and secured with a colorful head-band. Shira wore blue jeans, a tiara, and a black...

I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. (Exodus 6:5) It seems these days I have an endless array of guest speakers in my congregation: about the Syrian refugee crisis, about the death penalty, about homelessness, about the violence fraying...

Figuring out how to be good in a world with so many choices It was 2 am, and I was awake, lying on the concrete floor of a church’s basement choir room. A few hours earlier I had been in the hallway outside of this room, serving food to men and women who needed a...

In the militia headquarters in Odessa decades ago, I was surrounded by harsh interrogators who castigated my friend and me for visiting Russian Jews, who were aliens in their eyes. I felt anger and even hatred at these leaders and their many followers who had made Jewish life impossible for a large segment of our...

This week’s Torah portion is Yitro, named for Moses’s father-in-law, a non-Jew. It is in this parashah that we receive the Ten Commandments and make our covenant with God. So, how could the Rabbis have decided to name such an important parashah after a gentile? In today’s climate of polarization, it is more important than...

“These are the names of the children of Israel, who came towards Mitzrayim.” (Shmot 1:1) I decided to experience firsthand what homelessness feels like. Having the privilege of serving a vibrant and amazing congregation in Manhattan’s prestigious Upper East Side, and living in that same neighborhood, I have never quite felt that my sense of...

Nathan Roller, a T’ruah Israel Fellow and student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, shares his experience planting two trees–one in the West Bank and one in Israel–as part of the T’ruah Year-in-Israel Program. Donate $36 or more to support this important tree-planting project in 2019.

Climate change is making climate disasters, such as floods and droughts, more frequent and intense, land and water more scarce and difficult to access, and increases in agricultural productivity even harder to achieve. How can we respond? A text study on Joseph, Ruth, midrash, and prayer.

The Israelites’ Egyptian bondage was Joseph’s fault. Ok, I admit, the Egyptians were directly to blame. But Joseph’s economic reforms laid the foundation for the enslavement. Let me explain. After Jacob and his sons relocated to Egypt, the famine worsened. Joseph oversaw the collection of funds from the people of Egypt in return for rations...

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...