What It Means to Be Chosen – Parshat Yitro 2024

Every morning, we recite a ברכה in which we assert a bold claim about the Jewish People: אשר בחר בנו מכל העמים. We insist that G-d chose us from among the peoples of the world. But we are not the only people in the world to make this claim. The Masai people, who mostly live …

Where Justice is Just a Game – Parshat Shoftim 2023

In 1975, Bob Dylan released a song entitled “Hurricane” about the late midweight boxer named Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. In June 1966, three people were shot and killed and another was seriously wounded during a robbery at a restaurant in Paterson, NJ. Meanwhile, Carter and his friends were at a nightclub not far away. Police, while …

Error in Judgment – Parshat Vayikra 2023

In 1846, an enslaved man attempted to purchase freedom for himself and his family, but his masters refused. He decided to sue for his freedom in court. His lawyers argued that since he, his wife, and his two daughters had been brought to live with their enslaver for several years in Illinois and Wisconsin, which …

Staying Put in the Face of Danger – Parshat Shemini 2022

In recent years, there has been a lot of drama in the United States Senate about the existence of the filibuster. The Senate does not have any official limits on how long a senator may speak during the debate over the passage of a bill. Filibustering is when a senator takes advantage of the laxity …

Praying with Our Feet – Parshat Tzav 2022

In American politics, particularly, in some Jewish political circles, it has become common to reference the phrase “praying with one’s feet.” The phrase is attributed to two important historical figures who lived a century apart from one another, the Black American orator Fredrick Douglass and the Jewish theologian and professor Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. In …

The Very Different Journeys of Columbus and Avraham – Parshat Lech Lecha 2021

On Monday, many people had a day off from work and celebrated a day that is now designated as two separate official holidays. As declared by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937, the national holiday observed on the second Monday of October is Columbus Day, which honors the contributions of Christopher Columbus’s exploits across the Atlantic …

“An Eye for an Eye” and Equal Justice – Parshat Mishpatim 2021

Martin Luther King, Jr. was all of 26-28 years old when he helped lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama in the late 1950s. More than fifty-thousand Black Americans participated in the boycott and it was very successful at raising the national consciousness of Segregation in the South and moving the conscience of many white …

Safety, Universal Design, and Systemic Injustice – Parshat Ki Teitzei 2020

As we all know, Judaism does not limit its reach into our lives to moments of pure spirituality, to prayer and worship and ritual. Halacha touches on and regulates every aspect of our lives, from the way we wake up in the morning to how we eat to how we marry and start families to …

Skin Color and Alienation – Parshat Beha’alotecha 2020

One of the most expansive ways in which Cecil B. Demille took artistic license in retelling the story of the Exodus in his epic 1950s era film The Ten Commandments is the romantic interactions between Moses and the Egyptian princess Nefertari. At the beginning of the movie, in addition to the rivalry between future pharaoh …

Sotah, Racism, and Contagious Confessions – Parshat Naso 2020

Over the past week, social media, newspaper editorial pages, and popular thought journals, both Jewish and secular, have been packed with people expressing anger at the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis and outrage at the continued unequal treatment of Black Americans by law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Almost every …