RJ Blog

Rabbi Michael Namath, Program Director here at the RAC, tells a story to our L’Taken students: One day, as a few people were walking by the riverside, they saw babies floating down the river.  Several people jumped into the river and started pulling the babies out to try to save them, but more and more babies kept coming faster and faster. One of the men jumped out of the river and someone screamed to him, “Where are you going?”  He said, “I am going to see who is putting the babies in the river and try to stop them.” (Version [...]

This week the RAC hosted Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, Chief Imam of the All India Imam Organization. The All India Imam Organization is the largest imam organization in the world, representing half a million religious leaders and over two hundred million Muslims living in India. Imam Ilyasi has distinguished himself as a leader who powerfully addresses issues of religious extremism and global terrorism and frequently reaches out across religious lines. In particular, he has done considerable work bringing together Muslim and Jewish leaders in the Middle East and around the world and has been recognized internationally for his achievements in [...]

This is one eventful weekend! We have the start of Black History Month, Groundhog Day, the Super Bowl, and to top it all off, the first weekend of Jewish Disability Awareness Month. How will we possibly survive all the excitement? What were they thinking when they planned all of this for just a few short days? Luckily, Jewish Disability Awareness Month gets to spread the love all month long. And, lucky for you, I’ll choose not to overload you today with a blog post packed with 4 events, but just focus instead on one (can you guess which?). If you [...]

This post first appeared as an op-ed in JTA on December 9. The sages of the Talmud had a debate about how we are to light the Chanukah menorah: Should we begin with eight candles and remove one each night, or begin with one and add through the holiday? After hearing different views, it was resolved that we must add a light each night to grow in holiness. So, too, must we increase in holiness in all aspects of our lives. Just as it was found to be unacceptable to take away Chanukah candles, it is incumbent on us to advance [...]

Turkey pardoning jokes aside, Thanksgiving packs a lot of ethical punches for a secular holiday. First, we have some murmurings of imperialism (more on that tomorrow in Sarah’s post). Add to that the simplified explanation of making peace with our neighbors (sound familiar in this week’s news?) And then on top of that we have food. Food, the supposedly neutral territory. Those glorious eight minutes of silence when the entire bickering extended family stops to inhale their meal. Ask anyone, or read a week of my blogs, and you’ll soon discover that food fuels me, and not just physically. I [...]

When we stepped into the election booths on Tuesday (or mailed in our ballots anti-climactically two weeks ago), we were finally alone—there was blissful silence from the seemingly never-ending campaign commercials, a lack of fliers and posters and bumper stickers, no friends telling us which way to vote, and no camera phones posting our opinions to Facebook. But we did bring in one thing: our values. Let’s look at some ways in which religion and religious values played an appropriate role in this election cycle. Houses of worship have emphasized the importance of voting, regardless of the candidate. 52% of [...]

Last week one of my bosses posed this question to me: “How do you access your Judaism?” Immediately, I thought of more than a few ways: singing on Shabbat, Jewish courses in college, living tikkun olam through community service, my job, saying the sh’ma. I was about to respond with these, when I realized that one answer rose above the rest by far. I access my Judaism through food. Yes, I love to eat traditional Jewish foods, but for me food represents so much more in Jewish life. We gather on Friday nights to eat a meal together, bringing family [...]

Words matter. As kids we learn that sticks and stones can break our bones but words can never hurt us, but we soon realize that this isn’t entirely true. Bruises fade after a few days, but words linger in our minds for much longer. And, in this week’s “Ten Minutes of Torah,” Rabbi Bruce Kadden and Barbara Binder Kadden write specifically about the power of a lack of words. A lack of words is exactly what we’ve seen when it comes to the current political campaigns on the topic of poverty. Our candidates are talking about the economy, but not [...]

Yesterday we read in Isaiah the famous line, “Is this not the fast I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” (58:6). The verses, and our High Holy Day sermons, go on to talk about the hungry in our community. We’re all too familiar with the analogy: yesterday we chose our hunger, but every day millions do not choose their fast. Supposedly, these 25 hours (or less, because you might be hosting the break-fast or, let’s face it, those bagels and shmear are [...]