Reparations: Seeding a Better Future
The Past is Hard to Leave Behind
During the pandemic, many of us have turned to our comfort foods as we self-isolate.
Technology and Our Covetous Inclinations
During a recent Zoom meeting, a participant remarked that she dreaded video calls, lamenting, “Seeing everyone else’s beautiful homes makes me feel bad about mine.”
The Enslavement of Debt, Then and Now
“When you acquire an eved Ivri, Israelite debt servant, that person shall serve six years – and shall go free in the seventh year, without payment” (Exodus 21:2).
What is Holy to God? Each of Us
In the second century, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and Rabbi Eliezer, son of Rabbi Yosei, traveled from the Galilee to Rome to plead for the repeal of a royal edict forbidding Shabbat, circumcision, and the laws of ritual purity.
The Gift of Grief
In an almost imperceptible yet seismic shift, this week’s Parshat Chukat jumps us a few decades ahead in the wilderness journey of the Israelites. Maybe we need a movie screen caption that reads, “thirty-eight years later.”
Rebelling in the Name of Heaven - or Not
Few issues touch the Reform Jewish soul like those of rebellion and authority. In our synagogues one sees teenagers wearing "Question Authority" buttons and hears adults affirming individual autonomy as the cardinal principal of Reform Judaism.
Rebel Without a Cause
A friend of mine once made the observation that America is a culture in which a person might scrawl graffiti on a wall that says "Challenge Authority," and another person will cross it out, Challenge Authority.
Summer Heat and Inner Warmth
Although the summer seems to be the season of rest and tranquillity, in truth, every reader of the Torah begins this time with a boiling conflict.