Sarah Mulhern

Sarah Mulhern

Sarah Mulhern is in her final year at Hebrew College Rabbinical School, where she is also working towards a master's in Jewish education and is a Wexner Graduate Fellow. During rabbinical school, Sarah has worked in a variety of settings—including pulpits, social justice organizations, mikvaot, hospitals, and adult and youth education. Previously, Sarah worked for several years at American Jewish World Service, where she designed curricula, wrote divrei Torah, ran the Jewish justice text database On1Foot.org, trained educators and designed and led service-learning programs. Sarah is an alumna of Yeshivat Hadar, Pardes Institute, Drisha Institute, Beit Midrash Har El, and Brandeis University. She currently lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband Will.

Nitzavim

Parashat Nitzavim describes a ceremony through which the people of Israel will “enter into the covenant of Adonai [their] God.” It is a powerful ritual, with its recited litany of curses for when the Israelites abandon God and blessings for when they return faithfully, but it is strangely redundant. The people of Israel already affirmed their commitment to God’s covenant before the revelation at Mount Sinai. Why is Moses orchestrating a second entry into a covenantal relationship that already exists?

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Emor

Parashat Emor closes with one of the most famous and controversial pronouncements in the Torah.

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Chayei Sarah

Parashat Chayei Sarah opens with the death of the matriarch Sarah at age 127. The Torah describes the death of this important character in only two terse verses,[1] and the news is soon eclipsed by a lengthy discussion occupying the rest of the chapter—17 verses in all—about the negotiations for the purchase of her tomb.[2] …

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Lech Lecha

One of the things I find most inspiring about studying Torah is that the biblical characters are human. They may be our valorized, mythical ancestors, but they also consistently make mistakes, leaving a record of paradigmatic human foibles from which we can learn. There is one biblical failure, however, that I have always struggled to …

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Nitzavim

We are pleased to welcome guest writer, Sarah Mulhern, program associate at American Jewish World Service. Parashat Nitzavim describes a ceremony through which the people of Israel will “enter into the covenant of Adonai [their] God.”[1] It is a powerful ritual, with its recited litany of curses for when the Israelites abandon God and blessings …

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Balak

We are pleased to welcome guest writer, Sarah Mulhern, program associate at American Jewish World Service. “God has told you, human, what is good, and what Adonai requires of you: Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God. Then will your name achieve wisdom.”[1] These beautiful and tantalizing …

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Emor

We are pleased to welcome guest writer, Sarah Mulhern, program associate at American Jewish World Service. Parshat Emor closes with one of the most famous and controversial pronouncements in the Torah: If anyone maims his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him; fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for …

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