Moses, Violence, and Injustice
[This is the second of a series of posts on nonviolence in Exodus. The first one, by Aron Wander, is here.] This article is an adaptation of a drash given to the Shtibl community over Zoom on January 9, 2021.…
Tag
torah
Sukkot: The Joy of Abundance Where We Might Feel Scarcity and the Joy of Second Chances
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,…
Vidui for Black Lives
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…
“Today is Pregnant with Eternity”: The Dread and the Possibility of the New Year
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…
Crushing the Body & Spirit: Egyptian Slavery & Jewish Labor Law
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…
Elijah’s Violin
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…
Bereshit 20/20: What Torah Teachs Us About Democracy
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…
Matot-Masei: Hiroshima, the Nakba, and the Cities of Refuge
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…
Thinking about this week’s difficult parsha
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…
Thoughts on the Religious Language of Jewish Social Justice: R. Kalonymos Kalman Shapira’s Derekh ha-Melekh on Expanding Torah to the Walls of the City
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,…