Jewish Relationships Initiative

Tag: Moses

  • What is your one thing? V’zot Habracha

    That question sat with me long before I could explain why, until it found its place: Kraków, at the edge of a war. I went in the war’s first weeks, when Poland’s eastern border was still processing the deluge of Ukrainian women and children who had grabbed what would fit in one bag and fled their homes. Thirty rabbis brought two tons of supplies and a stack of money to do our small part in this humanitarian crisis. We headquartered at the JCC. We walked into Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, now the city’s hip center, with klezmer spilling out of restaurant doors and mezuzah-shaped keychains in gift shop windows. Jewish culture was on display, preserved as kitsch.

    The Rema Synagogue stands across the square, and behind it lies a cemetery the Nazis tried to destroy. Most of the gravestones had been broken or removed and repurposed as paving stones. The ones that remained were put together to form a wall, creating a mosaic of broken names. However, one grave was untouched: that of Moses Isserles, the Rema, whose notes on the Shulchan Aruch continue to shape how many Jews pray, eat, and live. His gravestone is inscribed in Hebrew with the words: “From Moses to Moses, there was none like Moses.”

    The line was never intended for him; it had been cut centuries earlier on the tomb of Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), who is perhaps revered as second only to Moses Rabbenu. Kraków took the epitaph and added to it, so three men with the same name now share the same sentence: Moses, who brought the Torah down from the mountain; Maimonides, who systematized it; and Isserles, who made it applicable to Ashkenazi Jews. They were all true giants and are so highly regarded that people still visit their graves.

    This week we study V’zot Habracha, the Torah’s final parsha. Moses makes his final preparations; he goes up the mountain, bestows his final blessings, explains how festivals such as Sukkot are to be celebrated, and then dies. The Torah does not allow him to enter the land he traveled toward for forty years; instead, he sees it and leaves a blessing behind. That is all.

    In our tradition, we look up to those who achieved greatness: a lawgiver, a philosopher, or a legal scholar who still guides a Jewish family in Philadelphia to keep milk and meat separate. When we visit the graves of these later Moses figures, we might wonder whether we could ever do what they did. But that is not the right question, and it might even lead us astray.

    In City Slickers, the old trail boss, Curly, played by Jack Palance, raises a crooked finger and tells Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, that the secret of life consists of a single thing. Mitch waits anxiously to find out what it is, but Curly does not say. Instead, he tells him, “That’s what you have to find out,” before riding off.

    Most of us will not write a Shulchan Aruch or lead people out of slavery. That is not what we are meant to do, and our tradition does not expect it. Instead, it asks for something smaller, and even harder: to find your one thing. This could be the care you bring to your daily work, or the care you show as an adult child, parent, spouse, or friend during a tough time. It might also be something quieter, like serving on a board without recognition, or spending time with someone who is dying and simply wants company.

    We have just completed the Yamim Noraim and closed the Torah scroll at its final word, only to open it again at the beginning. This cycle is the lesson: we never truly arrive; we keep returning, year after year, to the same question. What is your one thing? Not so that your name will be carved in stone, but so that when people say, ‘may their memory be a blessing,’ it will truly be so.

    Rabbi David Levin is the president of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia and founder of the Jewish Relationships Initiative.

     

  • Parshat Ha’azinu-Just a Thing Before I Go

    Moses knows this is his last day, and he does not ask for one hour alone.

    Ha’azinu opens with him addressing not his family, not his closest disciples, but the heavens and the earth themselves: “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth” (Deuteronomy 32:1). The parsha takes its name from that first word, ha’azinu, “give ear.” After forty years leading a people out of slavery and through the wilderness, and on the day he will die without ever entering the land he spent his life walking toward, Moses does not turn inward. He turns outward and asks the whole of creation to listen.

    That question continues to dog me.  What is left to do, on your very last day, except finish the work?

    There is no time for anything else. No mountain to climb for a private reckoning, no quiet reflection meant only for himself. Moses uses what remains of his life exactly as he used all of it, in service to the people he is about to leave behind. The tradition knew this. Rabbi Eliezer taught, “Repent one day before your death” (Pirkei Avot 2:15). His students asked the obvious question: who knows the day of their death? He answered that this was exactly the point. Since we don’t know, we should live each day as though it might be that one (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 153a). Moses is living this teaching on the one day he knows for certain is his last.

    Most of us don’t have that certainty. I do not know whether this is merciful or cruel, but it is human life.

    I often use a passage when I officiate a funeral. Death will come, and we cannot enter into judgment with it. Our question, why, will go unanswered. We rob death of its ultimate victory by living our lives so that when death comes, it takes us from a world where one corner is a little better because we were there. These thoughts do not give us an answer, but they refuse to let the unanswered why be the last word. And for the bereaved, they offer comfort for a loved one who is now but a precious memory.

    That, I think, is what Moses is doing on this last day. He has his own unanswered why. After everything, he will not cross into the land, and Ha’azinu does not resolve that grievance for him. He is resigned to his fate and doesn’t spend his final hours arguing the verdict. He spends them making sure the corner of the world he’s standing in, the people in front of him, are a little better for having had him.

    Rosh Hashanah asks us to imagine our names being written, and Yom Kippur asks us to imagine them sealed, v’chotveinu b’sefer hachayim, inscribing us in the book of life. We ask for more time in the very season that reminds us we won’t have unlimited time. We know we’re mortal. We ask anyway. I don’t think that’s a contradiction so much as an act of honesty. Wanting more life and knowing its limits turn out to be the same posture, not two different ones.

    Could I live even one day, let alone a whole year, with Moses’ clarity? Probably not, but I would like to try.

    The hope of these Ten Days isn’t that we become Moses. On his last day, we’re handed a smaller, answerable question in place of the one none of us can answer. Not why. Just this: whose corner of the world got a little better because we were standing in it this year. Who we sheltered. Who we listened for. Who heard us say, this year, give ear.

    G’mar chatima tova. May we be sealed for a good year, and may we spend it the way Moses spent his last one.

     

    I acknowledge AI (Claude, Gemini, and Grammarly), in developing this essay.

  • Parshat Nitzavim-Vayelech — How Do You Say Goodbye

    How do you say goodbye when you already know how the story ends?

    Moses has one day remaining. Since Nitzavim-Vayelech falls on the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, the text positions him exactly there: a hundred and twenty years old, told he will not enter, and watching the people whom he had carried through the desert stand at the edge of a land which he will only be able to see from a mountain. We have all seen something similar when someone we loved was coming to the end; there is a sudden flash of clarity just at that moment, the fog lifting briefly so that the person we knew can make one more visit. They don’t usually make speeches; instead they concentrate on what is truly important to them: they enquire about the grandchild, resolve what remains unresolved, say the name that needed to be said, and then the opportunity closes once again. Even though Moses remains as clear-sighted as ever, he too has this same kind of opportunity, and he makes use of it in the same way.

    After finishing the Torah, Moses gives it to the Levites; then he calls Joshua before the entire nation and gives him two words in place of a eulogy: chazak v’ematz, be strong and resolute. Furthermore, in the phrase which names the parashah, vayelech Moshe, instead of the people coming to him he goes out to them. The rabbis interpret this verb literally and state that Moses spent his final day walking from tent to tent so that nobody would have to go to him to say goodbye.

    This is not a farewell speech; it’s a man refusing to allow his goodbyes to become just another item that people have to collect.

    Earlier in the parshah, Moses had already told them what he wanted them to retain after his death. He did not want them to have a system of judges or a war strategy for Canaan; instead, he told them that it is already in their mouths and in their hearts, something they do not need to obtain from heaven or fetch across the sea. Last week’s portion explained why that closeness took so long, 40 years: the people were shaped into a state of readiness through hunger and their experiences wandering in the Midbar, rather than being ready from the start. At this point, the distance is finally short enough. Moses is not leaving them a locked box; he is telling them that the key is close by.

    He also instructs them to choose life so that both they and their children may live; that seems confident. But what comes next is not. God clearly tells Moses that the people will break their faith, follow other gods, and suffer as a result, and orders Moses to compose a song to serve as a witness on the day this occurs. It is strange to leave a nation behind, not with a promise that they will remain faithful but with a poem already ready for the time when they do not.

    I do not believe that Moses is contradicting himself; in my view he is achieving something more difficult than simply showing confidence. Earlier there is a promise that when they are scattered and eventually come back, God will gather them once again, even from the most distant places. Moses is not making provision only for success; he is preparing for both failure and a return, since after forty years’ experience he has realized that a people worthy of being led are never found solely in the good times or only in the bad. Leadership must have a plan for both situations, and so he leaves them one.

    I think about my own version of that afternoon more than I say aloud. What did I actually teach the people who came through my door? What survives me that isn’t a title or a building? Moses left no army or institution bearing his name. Simply a scroll. A name spoken twice to steady a nervous successor. A day spent walking tent to tent instead of waiting to be visited.

    What is written on your scroll? And who is going to need you to go to them before the day is up?

    Shabbat Shalom.

  • You’ve Made It- a message of Ki Tavo

    You’ve made it.

    I remember standing in a robe I’d never worn before, waiting for my name to be called at ordination and receive my Smichah. Five years of arduous struggle with text and new learning, self-doubt and yearning, brought me to a door with a new life just on the other side of the threshold.

    Ki Tavo opens on the same threshold: the name means “when you come” or “when you enter.” After forty years of a life lived one day’s manna at a time, B’nei Israel is told what happens on the other side of the wandering. Stand half the tribes on Gerizim, half on Ebal, and hear the blessings and curses called out across the valley. Near the parsha’s close, Moses says something startling: “Until this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to know, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.” (Deut. 29:3)

    Rashi, citing the Talmud, calls the sojourn a forty-year apprenticeship: a student doesn’t fully grasp a teacher’s wisdom while still living within it. Freedom and despair held the whole trek, neither ever defeating the other. The same generation that walked out of Egypt upright, unowned for the first time in memory, kept begging to go back, the terror of the open desert outweighing whatever freedom was supposed to feel like. Both built the organs Moses says only now work.

    I am sure you also remember the Wizard of Oz: the Wizard sends Scarecrow off with a diploma and Tin Man off with a heart-shaped watch. I used to read this as a secret they always had. They didn’t. Scarecrow learned to solve real problems along their journey, badly at first, better as the miles went on. Tin Man ached for Dorothy until the ache became, undeniably, a heart. The diploma and the watch mark the end of the apprenticeship. Moses closes one too, forty years later, on the plains of Moab.

    I have a deeper appreciation now of what I didn’t know in that robe. The Smichah didn’t hand me anything. It marked the point where five years of study and work had built enough of a rabbi to be trusted with the door. The building continued, with no ceremony, the following Monday.

    Which may be why Ki Tavo doesn’t let the forging stop at the border. It follows its own graduation line with a list: honest weights, field corners left for the hungry, a tithe handed over before you’ve decided you can afford it. None of it is glamorous. All of it is the forty years continued in miniature: a heart needs exercise to stay strong, and it gets that on ordinary days, not mountaintops.

    Ki Tavo’s list is not merely a set of ledger entries, God tallying rewards for the obedient and punishment for the defiant. I buried that pediatric theology long ago, when a good man’s chart recorded things his heart hadn’t earned. Good people lose everything; careless people prosper for decades, and no verse explains it away. What I trust is quieter: what we do in the small, unwatched hours still matters, and it adds up.

    The freedom didn’t turn into relief once they crossed, and the despair didn’t lift either. That may be why the mountains remain two, standing across from each other, neither ever collapsing into the other, both still true today. I know people who believe in a zero-sum game think a finite pile means grabbing first, before the next person can, treating others as threats rather than neighbors. I know others, driving across town with food for someone they’ve never met, paying a cost that isn’t theirs because someone had to. Gerizim hasn’t canceled Ebal. They’re both still standing, and so are we, somewhere between them.

    I have a heart to know now, more than I did years earlier, that it was built the way B’nei Israel was: not handed over but earned over years, with no one else watching. Ki Tavo isn’t really asking whether we possess it. It’s asking what we do with it on the Tuesdays after the ceremony ends, when no one is watching, and every day thereafter.

    Which mountain are you standing on today?

     

  • Parshat Eikev — “My Power and the Might of My Hand”

    Every success we’ve ever had, we tell ourselves we earned outright. Ourselves alone. Our sweat, our sleepless nights, our nerve. It is almost never true, and Parshat Eikev names the lie for what it is.

    “Beware,” Moses warns, “lest you eat and are satisfied, and build good houses and dwell in them, and your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies — and your heart grows haughty, and you forget the Lord your God… and you say in your heart, kochi v’otzem yadi asah li et ha’chayil ha’zeh — my own power and the strength of my own hand have made me this wealth.” (Deut. 8:12–14, 17)

    I have sat at enough hospital bedsides to know how quickly that sentence collapses. I was with someone who had amassed substantial wealth by building a successful business, a “self-made” man. Now, breath labored, strength gone, in a bed he could no longer leave, his truth lay before him; the wealth was real. So was the hard work. But beneath it all was a foundation he never laid himself — the health, the years, the people who taught him his trade, those who lovingly supported him, and the improbable fact of even being alive to do any of it.

    That’s the forgetting Moses worries about. Not the wealth itself; the Torah has no quarrel with houses, flocks, and gold. The danger is amnesia. A heart so full it forgets what filled it.

    Even the parsha’s name makes the point. Eikev is usually translated as “because,” but its plain meaning is “heel.” The part of the body we don’t look at, the part that drags behind, trampled by everything else on its way to something more important. Rashi reads it as a warning about the commandments we treat as too small to matter. I also hear something else: the heel is what follows in the wake of a life, the consequence that trails behind and eventually catches up.

    Shel Silverstein tells this story more plainly in The Giving Tree. A boy loves a tree, and for a lifetime she gives him everything: apples to sell, branches for a house, her trunk for a boat. Every time he needs something, she says quietly, “Take it; it will make me happy.” He never once says thank you. He only says I need until there is nothing left of her but a stump. Only then, an old man with nowhere else to go, does he sit on what remains and find it, at last, enough. The boy learned to be satisfied with almost nothing, but only after he had already taken almost everything.

    Except that the warning in Eikev is supposed to land before that, before the wealth, before the haughty heart, while the tree is still standing and nothing has yet been taken. It didn’t fully take, anyway. Centuries later, Hosea accuses Israel of forgetting the God who fed them in the wilderness, nearly making Deuteronomy’s own warning come true. The timing was right. The lesson didn’t stick, regardless.

    Here is what I can’t resolve, and I don’t think I’m supposed to: the same God who watches all this forgetting happen anyway is the God who fed them manna for forty years, who let them go hungry on purpose “to make you know that man does not live on bread alone,” and fed them regardless of whether the lesson landed. The love doesn’t wait for us to get it right. It carries us toward the promised land even as we’re still telling ourselves we’re carrying ourselves.

    So here’s the question Eikev leaves me with, unfinished: not whether I’m grateful in the abstract (I usually am, in the way that costs nothing), but whether my life is built to show it while there’s still a tree standing. Whether the small commandments I keep, the heel-commandments, easy to trample, say out loud what my heart already knows. What would it look like to learn this lesson now, on time, grateful while the tree is still giving, not only afterward, thankful for what’s already gone?

     

    Rabbi David Levin is president of the Board of Rabbis and founder of Jewish Relationships Initiative and EthicalLegacy.com

  • What story do we tell ourselves? Parsha V’etchanan

    What story do we tell ourselves? Our memory of events often differs from what actually happened. The deviation from the facts is not due to faulty memory; instead, it reveals a story that better meets deeper personal needs as we try to find meaning in the experience. This tendency to reshape narratives is a profoundly human trait, one that is powerfully explored in the Parsha V’Etchanan through Moses.

    In the second Parsha of Deuteronomy, Moses recalls the Exodus and God’s giving of the Torah. The word V’Etchanan means “I pleaded.” Moses recounts his encounter with God, beseeching God to allow him to enter the Promised Land. Moses’s plea, filled with a heartbreaking sense of injustice, is denied. He explains his fate to the people with an accusatory tone: “The Lord was angry with me on your account and would not listen to me.”

    Taken at face value, Moses appears to be shifting the blame for his own mistake—striking the rock at Meribah—away from himself and onto the Children of Israel. He isn’t just holding them responsible for the act itself but also for his suffering caused by his unfair punishment for that act. After 40 years of leading often ungrateful and rebellious people, Moses was exhausted, broke down, and acted in a way that was uncharacteristic for him, but he is held fully accountable. Moses isn’t merely recounting a story but revealing a fundamental aspect of human nature: blaming others for our own actions.

    We often face these situations. How do we respond when confronted with insult or injustice? Too often, we avoid taking responsibility for our actions and instead blame others. We react with harshness or indifference, rationalizing rather than owning up to the situation. The “whataboutism” mentality justifies bad behavior by claiming that if someone wrongs me, I am justified in doing something wrong too. However, our tradition teaches us that ultimate responsibility lies with the individual. The lesson is not that others’ actions can justify our own, but that we are accountable for our behavior, regardless of the circumstances. We cannot point fingers at others to absolve ourselves.

    This theme of personal accountability is closely connected to Moses’s chilling prophecy. He warns the people that after they have lived in the land for some time, they will inevitably “deal corruptly” and turn away from God. This human weakness and tendency toward complacency lead to a future of exile. However, Moses offers a remedy for this bleak future: a return to the fundamental principles of their faith, sharing both the “Ten Commandments” and the Shema and V’ahavta.

    Our tradition teaches that living by our values is non-negotiable. What we know as Derekh Eretz—the ethical “rules of the road”—must always be followed. We are only given dispensation when we are prevented from fulfilling our obligations. The strength and enduring nature of Judaism require that we respect others and live in a way that benefits both ourselves and our community.

    We stand against all hatred—not just antisemitism. We support the laws of the land and everyone’s rights to those protections. We believe in feeding the hungry, no matter who they are, housing the homeless, and upholding the dignity of work and the ability to support one’s family. Judaism teaches us to do these things because we understand what it means to be a stranger and to honor every person, since we are all created in God’s image.

    A society is judged by how it cares for its most vulnerable. This is a core principle of Judaism. Especially during difficult times like these, we are called to reaffirm and champion our values. They are more than just guidelines; they ground us, giving us clarity, meaning, and purpose.

  • Korach’s Question Is Still Ours-Who gave you the right?

    “Rav lachem — you have gone too far. The entire congregation is holy, every one of them, and God is in their midst. So why do you raise yourselves above God’s assembly?” (Num. 16:3). It sounds almost democratic. Everyone is holy, and power should be distributed. Who appointed you?

    The word Korach uses for “raise yourselves” is hitnassu, from the root nasa, meaning “to lift” or “to carry.” This is no accident. Throughout the Book of Numbers, nasa is precisely what leaders are called to do for others. The census begins seu et rosh, “lift the heads” of the Israelites (Num. 1:2). In the Torah’s own grammar, leadership is the elevation of people. Korach takes that same word and turns it reflexive: you have been lifting yourselves. What began as a vocation becomes, in his telling, a vanity.

    He has a point. Jacob Milgrom, in his landmark JPS Torah Commentary on Numbers (1990), notes that Korach’s protest reflects a genuine theological tension: the democratization of holiness at Sinai (“a kingdom of priests,” Ex. 19:6) sits uneasily alongside the hierarchical priestly structure that follows. Rashi, commenting on the opening verse, is more direct: his eyes misled him (Rashi on Num. 16:7). Korach understands the letter of the law. His error is not theological ignorance. It is envy dressed as principle. He deploys a genuine grievance to serve personal ambition, thereby corroding the very community whose holiness he claims to champion.

    This is where Korach becomes unsettlingly contemporary.

    Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) documented the collapse of social capital, the networks of trust, reciprocity, and civic engagement that hold communities together. Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build (2020) identified the specific pathology: our institutions have stopped forming people and have become platforms for individual performance. Leaders no longer serve the institution; they use it. The congregation becomes an audience. The office becomes a stage.

    Korach doesn’t want to serve the assembly. He wants the assembly to confirm him.

    A moment in the story is often overlooked. When Moses summons Datan and Aviram to speak, they refuse to come: lo na’aleh, “we will not come up” (Num. 16:12). The very men accusing Moses of inappropriate elevation refuse to engage. Their grievance has become more important to them than the community they claim to represent. This is how populism curdles: the aggrieved insist on the legitimacy of their anger while refusing the relational work that legitimate challenge requires.

    What does legitimate challenge look like? Moses, for all his flaws, shows us something: he falls on his face (Num. 16:4). Not in capitulation, but in recognition of the stakes. He doesn’t reach for power. He keeps asking whether there is another way.

    The erosion of trust in our moment is not simply the result of bad actors. It is the result of a culture that has learned to reward Korach’s move: mobilize grievance, claim to speak for everyone, and leverage that claim for personal advancement. It feels like democratic accountability, but it functions like its opposite.

    The text poses a genuine question to us. Holding leaders accountable is an obligation. But how do we do it without Korach’s self-serving use of righteous language? How do we distinguish the prophet from the demagogue when both speak the language of liberation?

    The Torah does not resolve this. It leaves us with it, deliberately.

    Discernment is itself a form of holiness. And it has to be cultivated. It doesn’t arrive by earthquake or fire.

    It comes, as it usually does, in relationship.

     

    Key Citations

    Rashi on Numbers 16:1 (s.v. va-yikach Korach).

    Milgrom, Jacob. Numbers: The JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990.

    Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

    Levin, Yuval. A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus. New York: Basic Books, 2020.

  • Mishpatim and the Modern State

    Ra'anan
    Ra’Anan

    In Parashat Mishpatim, we move from the heights of Sinai and the grand laws given by God to Moses to the granular details of civil law. The shift teaches that a righteous society is built not on abstract ideals but on the daily, impartial application of the Rule of Law.

    Mishpatim introduces three pillars essential to our current struggles:

    • Resistance to Tribalism: Exodus 23:2 warns, “You shall not follow the multitude (the mighty) to do evil.” In an era of “mob justice,” strongman tactics, and polarized echo chambers, this mandate requires that truth must supersede the pressures of the crowd.
    • Absolute Impartiality: The text prohibits favoring the wealthy or the poor in judgment. Legitimacy and order collapse when the law is seen as a tool for the powerful or a shield for the ideologically aligned. The blindfolded Lady Justice proclaims that all should be treated equally under the law.
    • Protection of the Vulnerable: By repeatedly centering the “stranger,” the Torah insists that legal structures are only as strong as the protections they afford the marginalized. A society’s greatness is defined by how it protects its most vulnerable.

    Our institutions are threatened as society’s trust in them erodes. Mishpatim reminds us that an orderly society is a deliberate choice, one that requires our involvement and confidence. Our future as a nation and world leader depends on upholding a system in which the rule of law anchors us against the storms of political passion

  • What Story Do We Tell Ourselves- V’etchanan

    What story do we tell ourselves? Our memory of events often differs from what actually happened. The deviation from the facts is not due to faulty memory; instead, it reveals a story that better meets deeper personal needs as we try to find meaning in the experience. This tendency to reshape narratives is a profoundly human trait, one that is powerfully explored in the Parsha V’Etchanan through Moses.

    In the second Parsha of Deuteronomy, Moses recalls the Exodus and God’s giving of the Torah. The word V’Etchanan means “I pleaded.” Moses recounts his encounter with God, beseeching God to allow him to enter the Promised Land. Moses’s plea, filled with a heartbreaking sense of injustice, is denied.  He explains his fate to the people with an accusatory tone: “The Lord was angry with me on your account and would not listen to me.”

    Taken at face value, Moses appears to be shifting the blame for his own mistake—striking the rock at Meribah—away from himself and onto the Children of Israel. He isn’t just holding them responsible for the act itself but also for his suffering caused by his unfair punishment for that act. After 40 years of leading often ungrateful and rebellious people, Moses was exhausted, broke down, and acted in a way that was uncharacteristic for him, but he is held fully accountable. Moses isn’t merely recounting a story but revealing a fundamental aspect of human nature: blaming others for our own actions.

    We often face these situations. How do we respond when confronted with insult or injustice? Too often, we avoid taking responsibility for our actions and instead blame others. We react with harshness or indifference, rationalizing rather than owning up to the situation. The “whataboutism” mentality justifies bad behavior by claiming that if someone wrongs me, I am justified in doing something wrong too. However, our tradition teaches us that ultimate responsibility lies with the individual. The lesson is not that others’ actions can justify our own, but that we are accountable for our behavior, regardless of the circumstances. We cannot point fingers at others to absolve ourselves.

    This theme of personal accountability is closely connected to Moses’s chilling prophecy. He warns the people that after they have lived in the land for some time, they will inevitably “deal corruptly” and turn away from God. This human weakness and tendency toward complacency lead to a future of exile. However, Moses offers a remedy for this bleak future: a return to the fundamental principles of their faith, sharing both the “Ten Commandments” and the Shema and V’ahavta.

    Our tradition teaches that living by our values is non-negotiable. What we know as Derekh Eretz—the ethical “rules of the road”—must always be followed. We are only given dispensation when we are prevented from fulfilling our obligations. The strength and enduring nature of Judaism require that we respect others and live in a way that benefits both ourselves and our community.

    We stand against all hatred—not just antisemitism.  We support the laws of the land and everyone’s rights to those protections. We believe in feeding the hungry, no matter who they are, housing the homeless, and upholding the dignity of work and the ability to support one’s family. Judaism teaches us to do these things because we understand what it means to be a stranger and to honor every person, since we are all created in God’s image.

    A society is judged by how it cares for its most vulnerable. This is a core principle of Judaism. Especially during difficult times like these, we are called to reaffirm and champion our values. They are more than just guidelines; they ground us, giving us clarity, meaning, and purpose.

     

     

     

  • Forgiveness -Moses and Ted Lasso

    Behaalotecha

    Within this parsha lies an extraordinary verse. As you will recall, Miriam contracted leprosy and was consigned outside the camp until she recovered. This comes on the heels of what Moses could see as a betrayal of him by Miriam, challenging his authority as the leader of the people. However, putting aside personal hurt, Moses prays to God for her recovery, saying, “El nah refanah lah. Please, God, heal her.” Moses teaches us to embrace our humanity and our need for human relationships, not mired in anger, but to replace retribution with reconciliation and to do the right thing.

    In the words of the modern prophet Ted Lasso in response to Nate’s return as the prodigal son, “I hope that either all of us, or none of us, are judged by the actions of our weakest moments, but rather, by the strength we show when and if we are ever given a second chance.”

    May their words serve as lessons for us to be better, more deeply human, and connected.