Category: Social Justice

Subverting Absolute Power (P. Vayigash)

12/21/2025

We live in an era of rising global strongmen and eroding guardrails for democracy.

Judaism has seen much in its 3,500 years, including the rise and fall of many strongmen.

Effective frontal confrontations are rare against absolute power and its penchant for corruption. Such powers tend to entrench themselves by means as damaging and corrupt as they are.

More common are less attention-grabbing ways to subvert absolute power. These tend to be less frontal, less direct, maybe less effective taken one by one. But together, they make the difference.

Hearing the Unheard (P. Vayishlah)

11/30/2025

Sometimes received religious traditions fail to hear the voice of suffering. Even worse, received traditions can suppress the voice of suffering.

It happens because every religion, by definition, titrates high principle through inherently limited and flawed human capacity.

What is our duty in response?

Rabbi's Corner: December 2025 – A Year's Second Hanukkah

11/30/2025

Thanks to how this year's secular and Jewish calendars interact, the approaching Festival of Lights will be the second Hanukkah of 2025.

Hanukkah is one of Judaism's most popular celebrations. For centuries, our people voted with our candles and community gatherings, as will we several times during the weeks ahead.

In this month's Rabbi's Corner, R. David offers two ways that perhaps we can make this year's Hanukkah uniquely meaningful, rooted in the deep well from which Hanukkah springs.

Don't miss the light shining at Shir Ami!

Sick Visits (P. Vayera)

11/2/2025

When the going gets tough, some of us have an instinct to pull in – to self-isolate, even conceal our tough times.

Maybe we resist drawing attention to ourselves or our difficulties. Maybe we feel that stoicism and privacy are the best parts of valor. We cleave to normalcy like it's nobody's business.

For deep reasons, Jewish spiritual life calls us against these instincts. We have duty to visit and help, and we have a duty to allow it. Here's why.

The Courage to Buck the Patriarchy (P. Bereishit)

10/12/2025

The Torah Cycle begins again. As our ancestors have done for thousands of years, the turning of Torah's scroll aims to teach us partly by eliciting our questions.

But for many centuries, one question apparently was too dangerous to the patriarchy for most to ask – which is why we must.

Our Circle Dance – Sermon for Kol Nidre 5786 (2025)

10/1/2025

For all of modern society's focus on individual rights and choice, even in the internet age, we still are carbon-based creatures who utterly need each other. Community has long been one of Jewish life's superpowers, but today hangs in the balance, buffeted by tides of social change and amnesia about who we really, truly are.

Power Moves and the Rule of Law (P. Shoftim)

8/24/2025

Current concern about eroding the rule of law is perhaps unprecedented in modern history.
Jewish spirituality anticipated the concern 3,000 years ago, and ancient wisdom points our way forward now at this pivotal moment.

The Middle Pathway (P. Re'eh)

8/17/2025

Nobody needs to hear that we live in polarized times. We know it. We see it in the media we consume. We sense it in friends and family. We feel it in our bodies. Polarized times often reflect and feed polarized thinking. "She's the best." "He's awful." "These times are the worst." "We're blessed beyond measure." "We're toast."

Some things genuinely seem to be extremes of good or bad – but not everything. There's a Middle Pathway beckoning us through.

What's 'Mine' is 'Yours' (P. Eikev)

8/10/2025

Western thought tends to hold that what we "own" – what we buy, what we earn, what we produce – is truly and only "ours."

Whoever we are and whatever our politics, much that we know about democracy and capitalism assumes this fundamental premise.

The idea is so basic and engrained that we hardly notice it – and even more rarely question it.

The thing is, though, we've been bumping up against this principle's inherent imitations since we arrived on these shores, since we developed moral conscience, since we climbed down from trees.

Especially now, humanity would do well to give it a closer and critical look.

Spiritual Vision – Now and Beyond Now (P. Matot-Masei)

7/20/2025

Last week, Israel's High Court of Justice ordered the Orthodox rabbinate of Israel to let women take rabbinic ordination examinations on the same terms as male applicants.

For thousands of years, Jewish life has evolved. Varying by issue and era, some evolutions have been fast, some glacially slow, some halting and non-linear, some seemingly "two steps forward and one step back."

This latest step by Israel's High Court of Justice reminds, as Israel's High Court often does, that Dr. King was right: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

It's on us to do the bending, and to know that we can, even when the path seems daunting – even impossible. All concrete spirituality requires vision beyond here and now.

<<Previous

Subverting Absolute Power (P. Vayigash)

Hearing the Unheard (P. Vayishlah)

Rabbi's Corner: December 2025 – A Year's Second Hanukkah

Sick Visits (P. Vayera)

The Courage to Buck the Patriarchy (P. Bereishit)

Our Circle Dance – Sermon for Kol Nidre 5786 (2025)

Power Moves and the Rule of Law (P. Shoftim)

The Middle Pathway (P. Re'eh)

What's 'Mine' is 'Yours' (P. Eikev)

Spiritual Vision – Now and Beyond Now (P. Matot-Masei)

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