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These are search results for "simchat torah"
On the coat-tails of the recent civil unrest in Ferguson, MO, we see racial tension that was perhaps lurking just below the surface stirred up into a national battle-cry for accountability and...
Thirty summers ago, I visited Universal Studios on a family vacation. My favorite part of the back-lot tour was the 1970s van sitting in an empty parking lot. Although it appeared to be a standard...
U.S. Reform congregations will soon commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with the annual celebration of Shabbat Tzedek, taking the opportunity to reflect on the progress that has been made in...
The wisdom of Torah is applicable in all times and places. Especially during these tense days in the life of Baltimore, the city where I live and serve as a rabbi, the lessons of Torah help us...
I want to slam society against the wall and shout at the top of my lungs, “This is not right! This is not just! This is not the world that we are commanded to create"
[Editor's Note: Rabbi Jacobs gave the following address on Saturday, August 24, 2013, at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.]
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When I discovered that this week’s parashah (Torah portion) would be Acharei Mot/K'doshim, which includes the Holiness Code, the irony was not lost on me. Here I was, the one openly gay male staff...
As we mark 50 years since Dr. King was assassinated, and in thinking about his connection with Moses, I’m drawn to Dr. King’s “I’ve Been To the Mountaintop.”
Almost as soon as the Central Conference of American Rabbis' conference began in June of 1964, the presiding rabbi stepped forward with an urgent telegram from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. King...
The end is near. When we wake up on November 9th, it will be over. And what happens then? We get up and go to work.
In his autobiographical book Lovesong: Becoming a Jew, scholar and author Julius Lester wrote about his spiritual journey to Judaism. It began while on a retreat, when a Trappist monk told him, ...
Each year at this time we honor the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – and more broadly, the civil rights movement. As Jews working toward a more just society, we know that the...
If certain politicians think that March Madness has left us ripe for transformation into April Fools, they are woefully mistaken.
I lay in bed one night late last summer, scrolling, as I often do, through my Facebook newsfeed on my phone. As a congregational rabbi and a mother of two young children - a now almost 5-year old...
The president of the congregation met me at the airport. It was late summer, 2000, my first visit to Hebrew Union Congregation, my new biweekly student pulpit in Greenville, MS. No sooner had we...
I'm uncomfortable entering unfamiliar synagogues - solely because I am mixed race, and people assume that I am not Jewish.
Too often in our own day, politicians of all stripes seek advantage through the denigration of others, through the promulgation of fear, and through the dissemination of hate. But not all views...
"Knock, knock."
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This essay about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. written a year after the civil rights leader was slain, is from a collection of unpublished writings by Rabbi Chaim Stern, z"l.
On MLK Jr. Day, we often see a sanitized, nonconfrontational version of King that is far from the radical activist who was reviled during his time for his justice work.
On the Shabbat of February 8th, I had the incredible privilege of participating in the seventh annual Moral March on Raleigh, organized by the North Carolina NAACP. In the past when I've been asked...
What do we read when there are no good words? As I thought about the text to teach following the tragedy at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, my mind fixed on the nine murdered. Murdered in...
“So, what exactly is your background?”
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Throughout his life, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached sermons, he often turned to the Book of Exodus to build his homilies. On April 7, 1957, at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church...
