How to Make Jewish Sanctuaries Truly Safe

by Rachel Faulkner
In this week’s portion, Terumah, Moses is given instructions for how to build a sanctuary.
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Lag BaOmer: From Mourning into Action

by Rabbi Elana Nemitoff-Bresler
Rabbi Elana Nemitoff-Bresler on how thinking of Lag BaOmer as the end of shloshim also reminds us that we have to move from grief into action.
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Law and Order? Or: How We Keep People Safe

by Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson, Rabbi Alex Weissman
In the current climate of police violence, particularly against people of color; political campaigns calling for law and order; and activist calls to defund the police, how might Jews respond? The following sources suggest an approach that flows from classical Jewish sources, through a lens informed by contemporary progressive values.
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Taking to the Streets: A Checklist for Action

by Assembled by T'ruah
A working document based upon guides from PG Watkins of The BlackOUT Collective and Frontline Election Defenders Tefillat HaDerech (The Travelers’ Prayer): May it be Your will, our God and God of our ancestors, that You lead us in peace and direct our steps in peace, and guide us in peace, and support us in...
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Unloading Our Neighbor’s Donkey: A Paradigm for Antiracism

by Rabbi Michael Latz
Loving our neighbors is not merely feeling affection towards them; it is joining them when that which gives them life has collapsed and fallen and striving to raise it, and them, up. When our neighbors are harmed, we hurt too; we are interdependent.
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COVID-19 and Racism with Tish James 5/21/20

by Attorney General Latisha James
“This crisis has illuminated the stark inequalities that have existed in this country long before this crisis but have now been brought to the forefront.”- Attorney General Letitia James Letitia “Tish” James, the first woman of color to be elected to the position of Attorney General in New York State, spoke with T’ruah about the ways...
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Purell, Red Heifers, and Why Not Being Racist Isn’t Enough

by Lila Corwin Berman
And at some point, I looked down at my hands and my children’s hands, spotless from washing, no dirt under our nails, and I thought about the historical chain of racist violence and state-sanctioned brutality that our hands grasped. Our social system makes certainty of our cleanliness an impossibility. Quite the opposite: we are all unclean, no matter how much we may have washed.
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Tefillat HaDerekh from Montgomery, Alabama

by Rabbi Nina H. Mandel
  Written during the T’ruah delegation to the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice, January 26-28, 2020 Rabbi Nina H. Mandel Bo Bo el Par’oh Come after the oppressor Join the trouble Muster your strength Gird your loins Mobilize your anger Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt Watch for bias Cry out for truth Soften...
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Every Person Counts? (Parshat Bamidbar)

by Rabbi Enid C. Lader
Commentary on Parshat Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) Our Torah portion opens with the taking of another census of B’nai Yisrael – the Children of Israel – this time “listed by their clans, ages 20 years and up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms…” (Num. 1:2) This is census number three since the...
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Messianic Vision in a Zealous World

by Esther Azar
Zeal—In this day many of us are fired up. It is easy to see the injustice. It shouts at us every time we open our Facebook feeds, its red face looks up at us from the newspapers at our feet. We march, we sing, we chant. We scream out in agony demanding change. A while...
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