At Time When Voices of Intolerance are on the Rise Worldwide, Fifteen Jewish Leaders from Across the U.S. Affirm Commitment to Human Rights American Rabbinical Leaders Visit the Dominican Republic on Human Rights Educational Mission NEW YORK, NY – American Jewish World Service (AJWS,) the leading Jewish organization working to promote human rights and end …
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My daughter has been protesting since the womb. The month before she was born, we blocked the street outside the stadium at the end of an Eagles game, calling out “Black Lives Matter!” When she was 6 months old, she rode in the carrier through the Capitol building to demand full and fair funding for …
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Like all of Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks, Rex Tillerson has come under fire from liberals. Unlike the others, though, he’s also been attacked from the right, as a few Christian conservatives think that he is too pro-LGBT to serve. Are they right? Could the ExxonMobil CEO be an exception to Trump’s Cabinet of anti-LGBT zealots?
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President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, an energy company large enough to have its own foreign policy. It is a policy, however, that doesn’t always align with the priorities of Jewish and pro-Israel groups. Oil companies have clashed in the past with the pro-Israel lobby.
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Rex Tillerson will be Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, the president-elect tweeted this morning, setting off a new round of condemnations from Jewish groups. Jewish leaders are joining senators on both sides of the aisle in raising concerns about the Exxon Mobil CEO, who has close ties to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
Read MoreAnu Mokal was four months pregnant the night policemen brutally assaulted her at a bus stop in Satara, India. They beat her so severely that she suffered a miscarriage. When she later filed a complaint against them, no investigation took place, despite the presence of witnesses. Why? Because she was a sex worker, and the …
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Jacob’s life often seems like a soap opera, with one dramatic episode after another. Parashat Vayishlach contains many of these moments—the violent nighttime struggle with an unidentified assailant, the tense reunion with his brother Esau who had sought to kill him, the rape of his daughter and his son’s vengeful response, and the death of his beloved wife Rachel during childbirth. And yet, in the midst of all of this drama and loss, comes a description of Jacob experiencing peace and wholeness. An examination of this passage prompts us to reflect on wholeness and its opposite, not only for Jacob, but for ourselves and for all of humanity.
Read MoreParashat Toldot contains one of the Torah’s most troubling and dramatic scenes of deception: At his mother Rebecca’s urging, Jacob covers his arms and neck with animal skin, disguising himself as his hairier brother Esau in order to fool their aging, blind father into giving Jacob the blessing of the first born. When Esau returns and the ruse is up, the emotional consequences of the deception become clear. Esau cries a bitter cry “ad me’od—to the utmost” and Isaac too trembles violently “ad me’od.” Isaac is so shaken by the trickery that, according to Midrash Aggadah quoting Rabbi Chama bar Chanina, “This trembling was even greater than his trembling when he was on the altar [at the Binding of Isaac].”
Read MoreParashat 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] …
Read MoreOne 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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