Israel: A beacon of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Middle East
by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback June is known as Pride month in America as an acknowledgment of the transformational change in perception around LGBTQ+ inclusion over the past five decades since the Stonewall Uprising on June [...]
Daily Kavanah – Thursday, June 10, 2021
These days when people list the various forms of hatred that must be eradicated, they include racism, sexism, anti-Asian bias, homophobia, and transphobia but too often they leave antisemitism off the list. Why is that? [...]
UTLA misses mark on anti-Israel resolution
by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback My father is a retired surgeon. Whenever he would hear about a fellow doctor opening a restaurant or some other, non healthcare related business, he’d offer up these words of caution: [...]
Naming antisemitism when we see it
by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback The other day a friend of mine who lives on the East Coast reached out to me about a disturbing email exchange she had with the head of her child’s private [...]
John Oliver fails Natan Sharansky’s “3D Test”
by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback Last week the comedian John Oliver devoted a segment of his HBO show to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He acknowledged at the start that conversations about the Middle East are fraught. As [...]
Daily Kavanah – Wednesday, June 9, 2021
My father is a retired surgeon. Whenever he would hear about a fellow doctor opening a restaurant or some other, non healthcare related business, he’d offer up these words of caution: “Son,” he’d tell me, [...]
Daily Kavanah – Tuesday, June 8, 2021
The other day a friend of mine who lives on the East Coast reached out to me about a disturbing email exchange she had with the head of her child’s private school. She had written [...]
Daily Kavanah – Monday, June 7, 2021
John Oliver fails Natan Sharansky's “3D Test” It’s painful when someone we are a fan of disappoints us in some way. Of course we know that most relationships will include such moments but, even if [...]
Invocation at HUC-JIR 2021 Rabbinic Ordination
Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback's invocation at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion 2021 Rabbinical Ordination held at Stephen Wise Temple on Sunday, May 23, 2021: The great Jewish American poet, Muriel Rukeyser, was told by her [...]
A message from Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
Next week I’m traveling to Omaha to visit family. I phoned my sister yesterday to make plans for our time together. She asked how I was doing and I told her that it had been [...]