The first day of 2016 featured women in politics. It happened in synagogues last Shabbat on January 1, as we read the opening chapters of the Book of Exodus in which six women make history and emerge as political catalysts. All are remarkably brave; all are women who make bold moves in the political/ethnic/religious arena of their time. Framed in contemporary political lexicon, the women speak truth to power, brand civil disobedience, and defy book banning and closing of the mind in Jerusalem. My reading of Torah within the current politics of book banning and fear-mongering in Jerusalem is informed by the idea that in a Jewish universe, word and world are in frequent dialogue. read more

I am delighted to get emails from the president that say, “I need you Ayala.” I know that emails from the president are mass-produced, yet they have a personal appeal for me because they use my first name. Yesterday, I got an email from President Obama asking me to join him, “before the ball drops and we close the books on 2015, will you join me and pitch in to help Democrats retake the Senate.” Since I like the spirit of being asked to join the president I respond to his appeal with a reciprocal email request: read more

President Obama celebrated Christmas in beautiful Hawaii, while his administration told children there would be no presents for them, and no Christmas cards saying peace and joy. When the knock would come on their door it would not be UPS with lovely presents; it would be government agents to send them back to places of terror.

These children and mothers, asylum seekers from Central America are fleeing unspeakable violence, and have risked their lives to come here, because remaining in their countries of origin is a death sentence. Yet the Obama administration decided that the week before Christmas would be an auspicious time to announce that it would intensify deportation of the mothers and children. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders rightly denounced the administration’s act as outrageous, “We need to take steps to protect children and families seeking refuge here, not cast them out. Our nation has always been a beacon of hope, a refuge for the oppressed.” read more

A rabbi, in her study, a few hours before the beginning of the New Year, speaking to herself:
Oh jeez, its erev Rosh Hashanah, and I still have no idea what I am going to speak about in my sermon tonight. I’ve got to deal with my procrastination this year. Maybe that’s what I can talk about, how the calendar is inexorable, and time and tide wait for no one, etc., and calendar events like Rosh Hashanah force us out of our paths of least resistance, and make us change our behavior. Or maybe I could just say because I waited too long to write a good sermon, I wrote this one instead, and that’s what happens when you delay too long, and let it be a lesson to you. No, too meta, and it will go over too many people’s heads. Anyway, if I gave a bad sermon, most people probably wouldn’t notice anyway. read more

3500 years ago, Batya, the daughter of Pharaoh, went down to the river to take a bath, and saved the Jewish people. Going about her daily life, she looked down and saw an infant abandoned in the river. No fool, she must have known this was a Hebrew baby. We are not told that she was a radical, an activist who rebelled against her father’s policies. But when she looked at the child, she did not see politics or religion. She simply saw a life that she could save. And in drawing Moses from the water, she saved us all. read more

Rabbi Hananyah said: “When people sit together and exchange words of Torah, the Shekinah abides between them.”(Pirka Avot, Chapter 3, perek 3)

In January 2014 four women started a Shabbat chavruta. For nineteen months we would meet at B.J’s dining room and over several cups of tea and a cookie or two, we talked Torah. Three of us were older women with grown children and growing grandchildren: we were an anthropologist, a writer and an occupational therapist and one of us was a young lawyer engaged in social justice and mothering two young children. It started out as a bikur cholim (the mitzvah of visiting the sick) project, but continued as an incubator for both new insights and social justice action read more

This sentence ends the prayer that I discussed in my last blog, the one that begins, On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed…

I don’t recall noticing it the first half of my life. In my youth, the choir may have sung it in Hebrew, which I didn’t understand. If I recited it with the congregation, it was surely in English. The English may have been the same as what appears in my grandmother’s 1927 Reform Jewish prayer book: But Penitence, Prayer, and Charity avert the evil decree. read more