Rabbi Susan Talveis the founding rabbi of Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, MO. She was ordained by Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1981, where she earned a Master’s Degree in Hebrew Letters and a Doctor of Divinity. She and husband, Rabbi James Stone Goodman of Neve Shalom Congregation in St. Louis, are proud parents of three wonderful adults.
I’m praying that these weeks of consolation before the High Holidays will give us the time to confront our sins and respond in ways that will help us to heal from our brokenness and find the courage and resolve to build a better year for all.
I know we have a long way to go, but for this congregation, situated in the city just a few miles from the Old Court House where the slave Dred Scott lost his case for freedom, I have hope that we are chipping away at the racism that plagues us.
Standing on the steps of the Old Court House in St. Louis the night before Michael Brown’s funeral, we stopped marching and chanting, and instead prayed quietly for his family and the families of so many black men who have been shot by police.