Loving your neighbor, who is like you, whose identity you share, is not enough. You must stretch the boundaries of love to wrap into its embrace the stranger, the people in our society who are furthest away from power. To counter the frenzy of rhetoric and the aspirations of policy that demonize these human beings, we need to love them fiercely. We need to love them fully.
Now we must learn the lesson our ancestor Avram learned: one day our dreams will be realized. Just not today. And not tomorrow. And maybe not for many years. But just as hope doesn’t die, dreams don’t die. The dream we share for America didn’t die because our dream— the dream of a just and merciful multiracial democracy in which all people live in dignity— that dream is the right dream. It is the only future… it’s just now clear that it will take much longer to achieve than any of us had hoped.
There’s an eerie resonance between the Noah narrative and this week. What does Noah's Flood teach us about navigating chaos and coming once more to land?
After the death of a beloved child in our community to suicide, we reaffirm our commitment to combatting shame with tenderhearted love, to meeting one another in the dark, to never giving up on each other. May Benjamin Ellis’s memory be a blessing.
Sukkot reflects our people's ancient narrative, balancing the transience of a wandering nation and the fragility of life with our yearning for home and the Eternal Divine. How does our tradition compel us to relate to those who yearn for home, but who are left to wander?
The only way forward is one broken heart next to another, crying together, awakening to the reality that grief is our common bond.
There is a dominant story in America today—a story of isolation, alienation, and narrow-minded extremism, fueled by a deeply unsettling convergence of right- and left-wing antisemitism. This story—propagated by a would-be authoritarian—plays on our worst instincts: the smallness, the fear, the ever-present sense of scarcity. And it threatens to do untold damage. We must write something new.
Text study and conversation between Alex Edelman and Rabbi Sharon Brous on the Torah of Joy, and the Power, Promise, and Necessity of Laughter in Dark Times.
Hope doesn’t die, and despair is a privilege we cannot afford.
We think of t'shuvah as a process that begins quietly, internally. We take stock and then we act. But what if we need an external catalyst first? What if we need to return to a physical place in order to encounter ourselves again - a different version of ourselves, different pieces. What can returning to a place surface for us? And what does our tradition show us can come from that journey?
One year after her sister's death, Michal rethinks the Talmudic story of "the oven of achnei" and Moses's final speech to the people to reflect upon the importance of small and private acts.
Vivian Silver (founder of Women Wage Peace, lifelong Israeli-Canadian peace activist and beloved friend to many in our community), was murdered by Hamas on October 7th. Since then, her son, Yonatan Zeigen, has dedicated his life to realizing her vision of peace. Arab Aramin is a Palestinian peace activist whose sister was killed by an Israeli soldier in 2007. The two are members of the Parents Circle – Families Forum, a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members in the conflict, and who believe that only together can they achieve a sustained peace.
As we prepare for the High Holy Days, what difficult things do you need to say to God? Covenantal relationship must be able to hold it all. The anger and the disappointment, the heartbreak and the rebuke.
We say Psalm 27 100 times in the High Holy day season. Why?
Six beloved hostages were executed in a tunnel beneath Rafah, leaving behind broken-hearted loved ones and a shattered nation. We must be clear about who is responsible.
At this time of year in our Jewish calendar, we are in a season of second chances. We are reading Moshe's retelling of the people's journey through the desert in Deuteronomy, and we are about to enter into the month of Elul, the month of spiritual preparation for the High Holy Days. It is also the moment when Moshe went back up the mountain to get the second set of tablets - the ultimate story of second chances. We are about to start our own month of reflection and repair - let's see what we can do.
Water is not only a building block of life, but also of culture. How we receive water shapes our consciousness and has the potential to remind us of the ultimate truth of our existence: we are always, and inevitably, dependent.
Source Sheet: https://ikar.app.box.com/s/rtmn38bq994apeql50rea60v1irkvvsg An extraordinary rabbinic story re-imagines the final conversation between Moses and God, exploring core questions foundational to the human experience. What happens in the moment of death? And, what peace can be found when learning to let go?