Are we ready to give sound to the silent beginning at Sinai?

Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and director of its Initiative on Regional Security Architectures. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dalia is an internationally recognized expert on geopolitics and Middle East policy. During her fifteen years at the RAND Corporation, Dalia served as a senior political scientist and the director of the Center of Middle East Public Policy. She has received numerous awards and held previous positions at an array of research and public policy institutions, including as a Fulbright Schuman visiting scholar at Lund University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, an advisor at the Foreign Ministry of The Netherlands, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She is a frequent public speaker and contributor to leading media outlets, including BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Foreign Affairs. She is the author of dozens of articles and policy reports, as well as three books, including most recently Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy (Stanford University Press, 2026). Dalia holds her BA, MA, and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

The death penalty has no place in a just society. And it has no place in a Jewish society. Shemini 5786

California State Senator Ben Allen, representing Senate District 24, including Beverly Grove, Fairfax, Mid City West, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood, joined Rabbi Sharon Brous in conversation.

Judaism greets our most powerful experiences of salvation and redemption with song and music. Using the lens of Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, we find music not only passively accompanying our experiences of the Divine, but also actively attuning us toward justice, bringing redemption to others and joy to God.

Ezekiel’s prophecy, read on the Shabbat of Passover, challenges us to dream audaciously. You cannot tell a redemption story that leaves some behind. And that includes those amongst our own people who’ve gone terribly astray.

How do we think about mo’adim, the fixed times in our calendar when we are asked to show up for a meeting with God? Can we treat these occasions as moments of sacred recognition?

We Jews are obsessed with telling stories – as the core of the Passover Seder and beyond. The obsession to do so is woven into the fabric of Jewish life and practice. Through interpreting our people’s narrative, we become the story we tell about ourselves and we partner with God in completing creation.