When American Jews think of the role of rabbis and community leaders in the civil rights movement, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s declaring that he was “praying with his feet,” comes to mind. For Heschel prayer was never just intoning words, it was an act with intention; when it came to justice, the best way to pray, according to Heschel, was is to act on its behalf, to move it forward, to march with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma. In his book Heavenly Torah, Heschel writes of the responsibility of political leaders: “To what can this be compared? To a person charged with guarding an orchard. If the person guards it from outside, it is well guarded. But if the person guards it from the inside, whatever is within will be secure, while that which is outside will not be secure.”  As long as Israel’s leaders only care about and privilege its Jewish residents above its Palestinian ones, it will never be secure.  This has been obvious for decades to those who cared to look.  It has been demonstrated again in the past two weeks. read more

Watching the suffering in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, we are waiting for President Biden, the one who on the evening before his inauguration spoke of suffering and healing. We are waiting for that leader who consoled a grieving nation in a remembrance ceremony honoring those who died of the Covid-19. We are waiting for the man who gave a clear message that night, “to heal, we must remember. It’s hard, sometimes, to remember. But that is how we heal.”

An exhausted people after four years of Trump, we were so moved when Joe Biden demonstrated the significance of compassion as a fundamental must for a leader. We have appreciated every time President Biden told someone in pain that he understood suffering and the difficult journey that humans take to get through tragedies. A mensch we called him. read more

We as Jews must not stand idly by when a grave injustice is done in a country and a city we love. We believe that Jews have a right to a state and so do Palestinians. We stand with Israeli organizations like Ir Amim that “envisions a city that ensures the dignity and welfare of all its residents and safeguards their holy places, historical and cultural heritages – today, as well as in the future. Ir Amim aspires to a sustainable political future for Jerusalem as the shared capital of two sovereign states – achievable only through a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” read more

I saw the story of Timmia Williams on Wednesday, four days after I got the Sunday paper. During the week I read several newspapers on line. Sunday is different, I get the paper delivered to my front door bundled up and protected from snow or rain. In my hands I hold printed news of the nation and the world. I look forward to a leisurely breakfast, an extra cup of coffee and read my favorite sections. I start with the week in review, I love the letters to the ethicist that despite four year of big lies, people are still searching for moral clarity; I read about modern love, and work my way back to the first section of the New York Times. It takes me a couple of days to read the entire paper. read more