Learn how a trip in the South helped a group of Reform Jewish teens confront racial inequality and explore their own connections to promoting racial justice.

We sat down with Rabbi Bycel to learn more about his humanitarian activism and the making of his book, which Madeleine Albright has rightly hailed as “timely, important, and deeply moving.”

Editor's note: The text that follows was presented before a live audience at the 2019 Union for Reform Judaism Biennial.

Only a few short years after the founding of the United States of America, George Washington expressed in an exchange of letters with the

 I remembered the lessons from Sunday school about pikuach nefesh. I knew that the obligation to save someone’s life supersedes every other commandment. I knew that if I had the chance to save someone’s life I had to say, “yes.”

Hope can be too hard to find - but really, those moments are exactly when we need hope the most. As I reflect upon my life, I am struck by this idea of hope, and how it serves as the underpinning of my entire family’s history.

I knew I wanted to serve the Reform Jewish community in a professional capacity – but despite encouragement from Reform mentors, I knew the rabbinate wasn’t the right place for me to do so.

With every seemingly worse piece of bad news littering our social media feeds and our news cycles and in the streets right before our very eyes, it’s fair to wonder: What if we simply can’t be happy, even when we’re commanded to? What if you just don’t feel like dancing?

ReformJudaism.org caught up with Sarah Hurwitz, a former White House speechwriter, first for President Barack Obama and then for First Lady Michelle Obama.

These questions are intended to honor all of us by helping to identify and acknowledge our missteps so that we may, ultimately, do better going forward. Additionally, celebrating our successes empowers us to move closer to the diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities we seek to build.