I was touched by Rabbi Larry Milder‘s email to his congregation about this very difficult week in our country. I am sharing it with you. For those of us who are Jews, or another repressed minority, it is heartening to remember that we can and must protect the right to vote. Our strength is democracy….
Read More »A meaningful life
A Smoky Sukkot
(Image from the SF Chronicle) Rabbi Chai Levy sent her congregation, Netivot Shalom, this email as we begin Sukkot and it spoke to my heart. Sukkot is my favorite holiday and I have to forgo it this year – at least in the ways I usually celebrate. There’s a Talmudic debate about the biblical mitzvah…
Read More »Definition of a Tzedek
One rabbi’s message to her congregation about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Shanah Tovah! Just before Rosh Hashanah, we heard the news of the death of a modern Jewish hero, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She lived her life as a proud Jewish woman. Justice Ginsburg worked tirelessly, throughout her career, for gender equality and women’s rights. Having faced sexism…
Read More »Torah portion Shoftim (Judges)
Rabbi Annette Koch‘s drash (teaching) on this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, brings ancient truths to modern conditions. Rabbi Koch is the spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Alameda. When my father spoke about the horrors of being a prisoner in a Russian forced labor camp on the Finnish-Russian border during World War II, he…
Read More »For White people who want to be Anti-racist
When I was a kid I would ask my dad how to spell a word. He replied, “Look it up in the dictionary.” Exasperated I said, “If I knew how to spell it I COULD look it up!” Being clueless may be your starting point. But what you DO know is that you want to…
Read More »Sitting Shiva for George Floyd
I have struggled with how to write to all of you. Many of us are in multiracial families; those who are not, still have black and brown friends. As a white person I am horrified and yet aware that it is a luxury to be horrified when this is routine for black people. So how…
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