A Practice: To Live Life as a Contribution

Last updated on: March 6, 2018 at 2:56 pm By Hebrew College

Vayakhel-Pekudei (Exodus 35:1-40:38) By Rabbi Alyson Solomon In parshat Va’yakhel we find the Israelites, convoked, regally assembled at the bottom of the mountain. Moses tells the community eleh d’varim, “these are the things” that connect us to YHVH – the Source (35:1-4). This we spend six days creating: we weave, paint, send emails, drive carpools, buy, trade, and cook—and on the seventh day, we rest. On Shabbat, we take in the beauty and grandeur of creation and are renewed, re-created.... Read more

Teaching God our Torah

Last updated on: February 28, 2018 at 12:25 pm By Hebrew College

Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) By Rabbi Mónica Gomery, Rab`17 and Laynie Soloman This week, revelation manifests as a rollercoaster in directionality, as Moses rises and falls from the base to the peak of Mount Sinai over and over again: “And the Lord said to Moses: “Go, descend, for your people….” (32: 7) “… On the next day Moses said to the people: “You have committed a grave sin. And now I will ascend to the Lord;” (32:30) “…and Moses arose early... Read more

Glitz, Glam and God

Last updated on: February 21, 2018 at 1:30 pm By Hebrew College

Parshat Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10) By Rabbi Adina Allen “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts!” Chanting these words in the Kedusha, we stand, feet together, mimicking the angels on high. As we press up onto our toes, yearning for that Divine connection, we take on the posture of these pure, ethereal beings without physical characteristics that exist only in spirit. Our conception of holiness often follows on this track, conjuring images of those things pure, simple, beyond the mundanity... Read more

Hope in the Margins

Last updated on: February 12, 2018 at 12:29 pm By Hebrew College

Parashat Terumah (Exodus 25:1-27-19) By Rabbi Adam Lavitt Speaking with a woman in hospice care, she told me she could not watch the news anymore because it depressed her too much. Though she was facing the end of her life, the turbulence of these times was utterly unbearable to her. In her despair I saw reflected back to me my own certainty, as I look into the public sphere, that our society is stuck. Her hopelessness touched my own fear... Read more

From Reception to Responsibility: God’s Ode to Restraint

Last updated on: February 5, 2018 at 12:06 pm By Hebrew College

Parashat Mishpatim (Exodus 21:1-24.18) By Rabbi Daniel Klein A lot can change in a week. It was only a week ago that the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai – through the thunder, lightning and shofar blasts, experiencing the overwhelming revelation of God’s presence. And then this week, the parasha opens with God saying to Moshe, “These are the laws you must place before” the Israelites (Exodus 21:1). Gone are the Divine pyrotechnics. Gone is the mountain that, according to a... Read more

You Cannot Do It Alone

Last updated on: January 29, 2018 at 9:33 am By Hebrew College

Parashat Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23) By Rabbi Margie Klein Ronkin As a rabbi and organizer for social justice, the past 15 months have been a moral nightmare and an organizer’s dream come true. As our government increasingly hurts communities of color, poor people, and religious minorities, thousands of concerned citizens—of diverse backgrounds—are coming out of the woodwork, eager to fight back. Many are entering the political fray for the first time. For years, leaders in the PICO/Faith in Action national organizing... Read more

Components of Faith

Last updated on: January 22, 2018 at 3:12 pm By Hebrew College

By Rabbi Brian Besser Parashat B’Shalach (Exodus 13:17-17:15) A congregant I’ll call K. just found out she has cancer. “I can’t halt the parade of anxious thoughts,” she tells me. “All my hair will fall out. What if the treatment doesn’t work? I’m going to die.” K. has a good relationship with God. She says “modah ani,” wraps tefillin, and meditates every morning. With the news, however, none of her spiritual practices seem to help. “How fickle my faith turns... Read more

On Approaching the Tyrannical Heart

Last updated on: January 16, 2018 at 3:57 pm By Hebrew College

By Jordan Schuster There is this scene from a tale by Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov that’s been hounding me lately. In it, the world has fallen under the sway of a handful of tyrants. Each tyrant claims a different moral truth. Each truth-claim begets a different moralizing discourse. As these discourses proliferate, the world divides, polarizes, rends itself apart. Mountains quake. The earth comes undone. Into the midst of this trembling, tyrannical world, Nakhman places the figure of a zaken – an... Read more

The Promise of Exile

Last updated on: January 8, 2018 at 9:28 am By Hebrew College

Parshat Va’era (Exodus 6:2-9:35) By Avi Strausberg The year I spent living and traveling in New Zealand was a year in which I lived entirely on what I could carry on my body. All of us backpackers, bouncing at once together and separate from hostel to hostel, were reduced to the same couple of unwashed t-shirts and pants, essentialized versions of ourselves, stripped of what made us distinguishable from one another. It was a year of living in exile, a... Read more

With Strong Hands and Outstretched Arms

Last updated on: January 4, 2018 at 11:26 am By Hebrew College

Parashat Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1) By Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld The story of our departure from Egypt begins with a cry—the deep, inarticulate cry of pain and longing that rises up from the bellies of the Israelite slaves and ascends to heaven. It is their cry, in this week’s Torah portion, that—after generations of slavery—finally evokes a response from God, and sets the process of liberation in motion. “The Israelites were groaning under their bondage and cried out; and their cry... Read more