Displaying 1 - 10 of 22
What Torah Says about Economic Equity
The word “economics” often evokes stock markets, exchange rates, global trade, and unemployment. But whether we are talking about buying groceries or the national debt, our material welfare and well-being have been of paramount concern since the beginning of human existence.
Seeing Ourselves in Torah
Just after the opening number of the 1992 animated Disney classic Aladdin, its title character sings “One Jump Ahead,” a catchy tune that introduces us to the young “street rat” and his sidekick, Abu, after they’ve stolen a loaf of bread.
Wholly Jewish: Max Antman: The Queerness and Politics of Torah
How can we embrace Judaism from not only a queer perspective, but also a “political” one? Max Antman (he/him), a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, discusses how being a gay man influences his reading of Torah, how his Reform synagogue empowered his gay identity, and the sacred relationship between activism and studying Jewish text.
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Wholly Jewish: Laura: Creating Peace Out of Wholeness
This week’s guest, Cantor Laura Stein, shares her perspectives on how we can best care for those around us, the (lack of) tension between being Jewish and being a lesbian, and how her spiritual leadership inspires her social work at Mount Sinai Hospital's Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery.
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Blessing First Fruits in a Time of Plague
I do not believe, as Torah describes, that God directly acts in our world, or that the COVID-19 plague is some kind of Divine message. But I do believe that in the face of disease, suffering, and evil, God weeps with us; and when we aspire to holiness regardless of our circumstance, God celebrates with us. And the more we keep these ideals in mind, the better we can build a world worthy of blessing.
What the Torah Teaches about the Use (and Abuse) of Political Power
“Justice, justice shall you pursue…” (Deut. 16:20) We find this famous biblical aspiration at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shof’tim, which continues Moses’ elaboration of the extensive set of laws that the Israelites are to follow, if they are to create a holy and just society.
Parshat T'tzaveh: A Theology of Sacred Ecosystems and Interconnection
Brazilian nun and ecofeminist Ivone Gebara writes from the frontlines of climate and economic disaster. Attuned to the plurality of pains crying out locally and echoing across the globe, Gebara weaves together a theology of ecosystem and interconnection, one that recognizes the vast webs of relationship binding all life in shared fate. Gebara offers a vision for human and ecological flourishing that starts with an honest account of communal and environmental degradation.
Building with God in the Wilderness: A Theology of Just and Loving Communities
In a path-breaking1993 work entitled Sisters in the Wilderness: the Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, Delores Williams sets forth a theology of the wilderness centered in the experiences of African American women. Building from the particular and speaking with universal resonance, Williams identifies a wilderness ethic grounded in the values of: survival, relationship and resilience. For Williams, the wilderness is a place of both struggle and possibility - a place in which Hagar, a slave cast out of her home, is rescued by God so that she can ultimately mother her own nation into being.
Beyond Welcoming The Stranger
This week’s parashah, Mishpatim, takes place against the backdrop of one of those “in-between” spaces. It sets forth laws given at Mt. Sinai as the Israelites journey through the wilderness from slavery in Egypt to an unknown future in their own land.
The Radical Lessons of Revelation
The revelation at Sinai was a radical act: our Sages understood it as such, and contemporary scholars are still grappling with its implications. Its radical nature was apparent not only in the public and communal nature of the revelation, but also in the ways in which God's presence was described, and in the strikingly novel relationship that God creates with Israel.