As a rabbi, I have long been committed to not offering “the Jewish view” on just about anything. We are and always have been a multivalenced, multivocal tradition, and rarely does our tradition truly speak with a monolithic voice. But when it comes to the Exodus and its main lesson, I think there is a Jewish view, and a singular Jewish experience. If there is a single overarching lesson of the Torah, it is this: We are commanded to empathy.וְגֵ֖ר לֹ֣א תִלְחָ֑ץ וְאַתֶּ֗ם יְדַעְתֶּם֙ אֶת־נֶ֣פֶשׁ הַגֵּ֔ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃"You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the Land of Egypt" (Ex.23:9)Famously cited for being repeated 36, though some say 46, times in the Torah, this verse is fairly brought to teach Jewish values around welcoming, around immigration, and around protecting the most vulnerable in society. The Judaism of [...]

Rabbi Hilly Haber, in writing about Parashat Mishpatim reminds us that: This week’s parashah, Mishpatim, takes place against the backdrop of one of those “in-between” spaces. It sets forth laws given at Mt. Sinai as the Israelites journey through the wilderness from slavery in Egypt to an unknown future in their own land…As Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us, the borderlands are a place of both pain and joy, a literal and poetic landscape in which imagination and possibility take root.  While I love nothing more than teaching about the spaces betwixt and between, I am struck today—this week, this year, this Repro Shabbat—by the Torah’s imperative to move forward. Unlike Anzaldúa, who perhaps remains in that borderland, we are progressing. In their resources for this Repro Shabbat, the National Council of Jewish Women shared this song, inspired by Psalm 37. With a refrain of “we won’t go back,” it is presented as a call to [...]

In a discussion about this week’s parasha, Rabbi Rick Jacobs (the president of the Union for Reform Judaism), speaks about the sometimes complicated relationship between Reform Judaism and the notion of obligation. Because Reform Judaism developed as an ideology of choice rather than commandment, it is sometimes accused of being a buffet of Judaism, where we pick and choose the things we like, or the ones that come naturally to us—and reject the commandments that are hard or inconvenient. It will not surprise you, I think, that this is a characterization that I reject, wholeheartedly. The Reform Jews—and Reform Judaism—that I love and try to teach is a rigorous one, a faith and an ideology that is continually trying to live an authentic Jewish life in a modern and complicated world. As Rabbi Jacobs says, we are trying to live Jewish lives of depth and courage. But when it comes to [...]

In a powerfully American confluence, this week finds us marking: President’s Day, Black History Month, Jewish Disabilities Awareness and Inclusion Month, and Repro Shabbat. It’s also, in case you were wondering, National Cabbage Day and National Random Acts of Kindness Day today, so let that be an inspiration to you as well. Perhaps it is fitting too that this week we prepare to read Parashat Mishpatim. This parasha, following immediately after the giving of the 10 Commandments, begins to lay out the ethical, legal, and religious framework through which the Israelites—and eventually us—are meant to build their society and their lives. As is true in most of the chapters and sections of Torah in which rules are offered or explicated, the laws as set forth in Mishpatim are diverse, running the gamut from financial to nutritional to ritual. Mishpatim, this very first collection of rules and statutes, reminds us of the holistic nature of Jewish [...]