The author, the National Jewish Educator for Avodah, originally wrote this for the Avodah Service Corps. The Festival of Sukkot is about closure. It arrives dramatically as the culmination of not one but two holiday cycles, the Three Pilgrimage Festivals,…
Yesterday I was floored by the callous disregard for justice – no, I’m used to that. What I was floored by was its blatentness. To have the only charges be for the walls of the neighbors’ apartments, and none for…
The Torah gives just one unique commandment for Rosh HaShanah, to hear the sound of the Shofar, producing that raw, emotionally complex, array of sounds that evoke: the summoning of courage for dangerous battle (such as before Jericho’s walls came…
by Aryeh Bernstein This devar torah for Parashat Ki Tavo and Labor Day was first written internally for the Avodah Service Corps, for which the author is National Jewish Educator. Around the world, Jews are nearing the conclusion of the…
There is a Jewish folktale from Egypt called “Elijah’s Violin” and I had to go track it down after I, along with so many, became aware of the heartrending story of Elijah McClain. One year ago, McClain suffered fatal…
When T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights embarked on our Torah 20/20 project this past October (with funding from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah), the goal was to offer Jewish wisdom and language to frame and nourish the…
I think the idea that we have to either accept or reject traditions, texts, works of art because they are tainted by cultural forces or even individuals who offend us is premised on a false dichotomy. I’ll go further. I…
If you were paying attention to this week’s Torah reading of Mattot-Massei, you were presumably horrified by the description of the genocide and sex slavery the Israelites inflicted on the Midianites at the command of God. The question of the…
by Shaul Magid Shaul Magid is the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Kogod Senior Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Seaview,…
Emily Strauss is a community organizer, and a frequent contributor to New Voices, Jewish Currents, The Forward, and Lilith magazine. For the second year in a row, the Trump administration failed to acknowledge June as LGBTQ pride month, neglecting to…