The Urban Rabbi

What’s the hardest thing we do on Yom Kippur? What’s the most onerous demand the Day of Atonement places upon us? To be sure, we seek forgiveness and that’s tough because it requires us to be vulnerable and admit our mistakes. Harder still may be our need to forgive others because that requires letting go of our resentment, allowing open wounds to close. But, the hardest thing I think is in fact neither of those: it’s to forgive ourselves!

What’s powerful about P!nk’s words is that she doesn’t take the bait, she doesn’t descend into jingoism, knee-jerk protectionism, or whataboutism. She doesn’t justify anyone’s bad behavior. The power of the Jewish story, she understands, is that we are chosen to inhabit not just our Jewishness but our humanity in full. Our heroes grow, learn, do teshuvah, do better. Compassion, empathy, insistence on just outcomes, these qualities make us Jews. That’s not a story we should whisper in our children’s ears; it’s one we must teach them to wear as a badge of honor.

In Memoriam: An Invitation to Find Balance Once More

It's time to treat diversity and difference as assets again

Last weekend, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of New York’s Central Synagogue said the following in an interview: “We know what kind of city we want to live in. One in which people of all faiths, classes and colors feel belonging. For Jewish New Yorkers, it has to include both safety and security on a physical level, and knowing we will not be demonized, marginalized or harassed for supporting a Jewish homeland....”

"There are forces that want to bathe our joy in inescapable grief, as we learned on Tisha B’Av. But there are other forces, better forces, Godly forces, that can be an antidote to the disease of hate."

"America, like Jewish tradition, is not only about the human being, but the human becoming. What we are is an invitation to who we might be. There are legal systems, political systems, social stratifications in the world which insist large segments of their societies are trapped in their station, defined inexorably by their race or gender or caste. This, I believe, is not what America stands for. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Not only being but becoming, pursuing."

"...the irreducible holy is iterative. Our tradition may say we must only go up, but there are forces pulling us down; they are strong and they are determined. To live a “consecrated, dedicated life,” to achieve an aspirational society, requires stamina, patience, and a belief in a higher purpose for this complicated world."

At first blush, Tazria-Metzora is about illness. It includes a detailed description of this enigmatic disease called tzara’at. similar to, but not the same, as leprosy. But the Rabbis suggest the whole detailed description of tzara’at is not about only about disease but discourse, malicious speech.