Both the Torah Portion (Pinchas, Numbers 25:10) and the Haftarah (I Kings 18:46) include expressions of extreme (religious) violence. In the former, Pinchas, a grandson of Aaron, publicly slays a mixed couple. In the latter, the prophet Elijah, some four centuries later, slays the priests of Baal and then dismembers...

Despite the fact that the Constitution of the new State of North Carolina required that the holding of public office required both a belief in the “truth of the Protestant religion” and the “divine authority” of the New Testament, Jacob Henry (1775-1847), a Jew, was elected to the North Carolina...

At this moment of extreme racial tension in the United States, it is important to reopen the books and recall an almost entirely unknown story involving the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in 1868 in Tennessee. The Civil War had ended just three years earlier but smoldering racial resentments...

God Bless America. 2 God bless America Ideals that I love Through the gas and the glass In the night of our broken laws From our cities to the White House To the police stations Burned and charred God bless America Land filled with scars God bless America Its streets...

I Can’t Breathe I can’t breathe, The knee of oppression Is on my neck. I can’t breathe, The air of my city Is filled with tear gas. I can’t breathe, I am filled with rage And the smoke of burning buildings. I can’t breathe Because the air is filled with...

I was amazed to learn earlier this week that over 600 people had viewed and liked my posting on Facebook of Rabbi Rick Jacobs’, President of the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ), message that Reform synagogues will stay closed for the foreseeable future in response to COVID-19. “The saving of...

We can all agree that experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic has been a unique, unprecedented, and disconcerting experience. Nearly every aspect of life as we knew has been significantly disrupted. School, work, travel, sports, culture, and faith all have been re-tracked, sidelined or even shut down. It has only been a...

In many places, mostly prematurely in my opinion, people are talking about “opening up” America again. We don’t need to get into that debate here, but I do think we can begin to speculate on what the new normal is going to look like after COVID-19 is relegated to the...

For those of us who grew up in the Reform movement or joined it during the course of our adult journey, Grant Us Peace is a familiar and much beloved prayer both because of its English language text and its various musical interpretations. What is less known is the surprising...