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In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vayeshev, Joseph is cast into a Biblical version of solitary confinement. After boasting of his future successes and power over his siblings, the brothers plot to kill Joseph before deciding to throw him into a pit. Soon after, they remove him from the pit and sell him into servitude....

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...

Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe — Shekhinah, Whose wings shelter creation — Once our people wandered the desert sands. Now we merely vacation in rootlessness While our Bedouin neighbors perch Without permission, their goats forbidden to graze. Time after time the bulldozers tear down homes And playgrounds, uprooting spindly olive trees To make...

A few weeks ago, Hurricane Sandy blasted through the Caribbean, the United States and Canada. In her wake, more than 100 people have died along with untold damage to public infrastructure and personal property. For days the images poured in of families evacuating their homes in search of higher altitudes, of empty streets overflowing with...

In this week’s Torah portion, we read the following words about the first Jew ever to set out for the land we call Israel:  “V’Avraham zakein ba bayamim” – “Abraham was old, advanced in years.”  Torah scholars point out that the phrase is redundant – if he’s old, we already know he’s advanced in years. ...

Many people around the world consider Genesis Chapter 16 of this week’s parasha—describing Hagar’s marriage to Avram, her pregnancy and her ill-treatment by Sarai—to be a glimpse of things to come in relations between Jews and Muslims, even between Israelis and Palestinians.  While this perception distorts the long history of Jewish-Muslim relations through history, the...

Once again, all over again, we are beginning at the beginning of the Torah this week. Bereshit bara Elokim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz, “In the beginning G-d created heaven and earth”, at least according to one translation. Haven’t we done this already? Do we really have to go back and consider the beginning again, and...

When does Jacob do teshuvah for swindling his brother Esau out of birthright and paternal blessing? Reading over the brothers’ reconciliation in Parshat Vayishlach, I am struck by all that is missing. How can the brothers truly reconnect if past hurts are left buried? As Esau approaches, Jacob’s actions show concern but not contrition. He...

The Torah portion that we have just read tells a story about Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, which is both moving and troubling. A number of years earlier, at the suggestion of Sarah, who had reached old age without being able to bear a child, Abraham had a son with Sarah’s servant Hagar. Abraham...

For millennia, we Jews have been burying our dead outside the city limits, in caves, in fields and on hillsides. Just recently, for example, I stood with a crowd of people in a field, waiting to bury a friend, cousin, classmate, brother, son. Together we, the living, placed one of our own into the earth....