The sun is setting, orange and pink rays are caught by the darkened clouds. It is the Sabbath. In synagogues all over the world, Jews greet the Sabbath with psalms and songs. “Tzaddik k’tamar yeefrach, k’erez balvanon yisge. The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, he shall grow like a Cedar in Lebanon” (Psalm:92:12).

The Hebrew Bible abounds in botanical imagery. The Cedar of Lebanon stands close to 115 feet high with strong, deep roots and a wide canopy of branches, the oldest Cedars are thousands of years old. These trees are resilient and useful. The righteous person stands tall and proud with wide arms to embrace all. The righteous person stands in this world with deep roots in traditions and a crown of branches reaching to the heavens. read more

I have become untethered from moral certainty. As an observant Jew, I adhere to certain moral truths. As a liberal humanist, I acknowledge cultural and moral relativism. But I am disoriented by the moral judgements made by members of my cultural groups. My identity is on shaky ground. Two experiences are illustrative of this liminality.

On Friday, May 18^th, 2012 I stood in a crowd outside the former home of my grandparents, Sally (Shalom) and Elise Halpern, Z”L, in Konstanz, Germany. My grandparents died in the Holocaust, and the Stolpersteine project was laying stones in front of their former home in their memory. Most of the people in the crowd were strangers to me, except for my daughter, sister and brother-in-law, with whom I had traveled from the U.S., and my son and (future) daughter-in-law who had traveled from Israel to join us in Germany. Also, the day before, we had met Petra, a young German woman who researched our family for the Stolpersteine presentation and laying of stones in front of our grandparents’ home, and we were standing that day in the assembled crowd listening to Petra tell our family’s story before the stones were put into the sidewalk. Two women caught my attention at this event. The first was a woman who came out of the building and began yelling at the Stolpersteine volunteers and at the artist (Gunter Demnig). Petra explained that the woman was the current owner, and she did not want the stones placed before her doorway.   The woman angerly gave a number of reasons, such as the liability if the bronze nameplates became slippery in wet weather. Everyone ignored her, as she had no legal claim, and she quieted when the official ceremony began. Afterwards, she relented and gave our family a tour of her home. read more

On Tuesday June 26, 2018 the Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling, dealt a massive blow to democracy and delivered a victory to hatred. The five justices, with one stolen from President Obama, joined with President Trump to discriminate against Muslims. In historic terms, this ruling wiped out a sacred American principle of religious freedom, forged in the 18^th century.

On September 17, 1787, after a long hot exhausting summer, America declared in Article VI of the Constitution that ‘No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.’ It began a process of etching religious freedom as a legal right and affirmed it on December 15 1791 in The First Amendment, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” read more

There is absolutely no justification for the current policy being used on the Gaza border.

Here in Israel/Palestine, we have just lived through some of the most dramatic days in recent memory. The calendar said it all: May 12 was the deadline for President Donald Trump to declare whether the American government was remaining committed to the Iran nuclear deal; May 14 was set for the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem; and May 15 was Nakba Day — the day the Palestinians mark the anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and their nakba (disaster or catastrophe). May 15 was also going to be the climax of the six-week-long March of Return, a mass Palestinian protest along the Gaza border. read more