Social Justice Gift Guide 5777
In search of a unique gift for the social justice junkie in your life? Look no further than our Social Justice Hanukkah Gift Guide, with eight suggestions full of tzedek – one for each night!
How Tikkun Olam and Pikuah Nefesh Will Help Me Prepare: A #BlogElul Post
Last week I had lunch with a rabbi friend who told me he’s in the midst of preparing four different sermons for the upcoming High Holidays.
Syrian Refugees
With more than 500,000 people displaced to neighboring countries by the violent civil war in Syria, the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief (JCDR) has opened a fund to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees.
Strange Fruit
After seeing the infamous 1930 photograph by Lawrence Beitler, which depicts the mob lynching of two young black men, a Jewish high school teacher named Abel Meeropol wrote a haunting poem titled "Strange Fruit." The poem was first published in 1936 in The New York Teacher, a union magaz
Growing Up as the Favorite Son
Parashat Vayeishev introduces the Joseph saga. When it begins, Jacob’s 11th son, Joseph, is a 17-year-old shepherd working in the fields alongside his older brothers. The text’s description of him as a “youth,” na-ar, is apt, both biologically and emotionally. As Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg writes: “Joseph behaves with the narcissism of youth, with a dangerous unawareness of the inner worlds of others” (Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire [Philadelphia: JPS,1995], p. 253). He consciously tells Jacob malicious tales about the brothers and by wearing the beautiful, multicolored coat (or ornamental tunic) that Jacob has given him, flaunts the fact that he is the favorite son. It is thus not surprising that when Joseph’s brothers see that their father loves him more than they, they come to hate Joseph (Genesis 37:4).