Social Justice: Leadership and Philosophy

We find that we have to learn from our ancestors with a dual dose of humility and chutzpah: both to learn from their wisdom, and also to transcend their limitations.

God, according to the Torah, created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. This doesn’t mean that the world was perfect at the end of the sixth day of creation. Rather, God models the necessity of taking just one day to experience the world as it is, while acknowledging our own limitations in perfecting it.

Looking back can be terrifying. We are further protected by being a part of the covenantal community, thus we can look back safely, unflinchingly, to the very real horrors that have shaped our communities and our lives.

What is the Torah inscribed on our lands and in our hearts? What Torah do we bring with us into a new land?

God entrusts us, flawed mortal beings as we are, with the responsibility to figure it out and take care of each other.

It is not enough to mourn. Mourning must be accompanied by actions that end the harm being done. 

...let us strive to learn from Zelophechad’s daughters, seeking good wherever we can find it.

We find in our tradition that God dwells not in the destruction, but in the moment right before rebuilding.

I like to imagine that Balaam’s words changed us and shook us out of our complaining so that we could see ourselves in a fresh way.

When we escalate from anger to contempt, to what 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer described as “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another,” we move our gaze from a person’s actions to their individuality, their personhood.