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So Much is Unknown. Do What You Know.
– Rabbi Sharon Brous | B’shallakh 5785
Four postures our tradition warns against, in the face of grave threat:
Do not snail.
Do not capitulate.
Do not meet become the mirror image of your enemy.
Do not render yourselves preemptively powerlessness.
Instead: do what you know
We Cannot Go Numb in this Darkness
We are all struggling in this moment of deep darkness – either riding the constant emotional rollercoaster or already feeling numb. The thing is that both of these will destroy us. Instead, we need to stay connected to our humanity and each other to get us through. That is the only way we will find ourselves back in the light.
Why a Mother and Daughter Visited Israel and Palestine Together
How do American Jews navigate complex conversations about Israel and Palestine across generations? And what does it take to truly listen to each other? Rabbi Sharon Brous sits down with IKAR’s CEO Melissa Balaban and her daughter Emma Wergeles to reflect on their recent trip to Israel and the West Bank with Encounter. From different generational perspectives, they share what challenged them, what moved them, and why direct engagement with both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives is essential for for any hope of a lasting and just peace.
Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God
This is the moment to remember who we are, to ground ourselves in the story that stands in determined opposition to the story of tyranny. To tell of a God who cares about the vulnerable. To become again a people whose faith compels us to protect the frightened.
Preparing for Festivals and Funerals
After 15 months of catastrophic loss, unspeakable heartache, and the utter undoing of not one but two peoples—in body and spirit, we stand—at this moment—at an inflection point. May this be the beginning of the end of the suffering. May it be the beginning of the path toward a just peace.
Reflections on HOME, From Amidst the Fire
Even as the fires burn, let us hold on another, give voice to what we have lost, and turn toward what remains.
The Names We Carry
How did Joseph, a man hardened by one life experience after the next, soften his heart to forgive his brothers? A remarkable midrash imagines a conversation between Joseph and Benjamin that changes everything. Ten names and all the worlds of meaning, of missing, of memory they contain.
Treachery or Truth?
What is Joseph’s legacy? And what can we learn from the character with the most costume changes in all of the Torah?
We Cannot Escape One Another
Jacob tried to flee from his estranged brother. Did he fear more the battle, or the potential reconciliation? What happens when victimhood is built into our self-definition? What do we lose when we stay at the table, and what might we gain? What will it take for us to understand that there is no future until we see one another?
The Mouth of the Well
There is a teaching in Pirkei Avot that says that the mouth of the well was made during the first Shabbat of creation. We have long accepted it to be Miriam’s well, but what if it’s the well from this week’s parsha – the one Jacob encounters after his dream, and where he meets Rachel for the first time? If it’s that well, then maybe we, like Jacob, have to find the well, roll off the stone, and discover what exists underneath.
Bound and Unbound
Who is Isaac? The man perpetually trapped by his father’s story, still bound to the altar, forever defined by the core trauma of his life. What will it take to break free? For the once bound to become unbound?
Let Us Be the Light Force
After a life of heartache, two estranged brothers affirmed each other’s humanity,
and rediscovered their own. We, too, can make that choice. Let us push back on the encroaching darkness as a force for good—a light force—that counters the cruelty, racism, and violence poisoning our culture with compassion, tender presence, and forgiveness. This is what solidarity looks like.
Love the Stranger
Loving your neighbor, who is like you, whose identity you share, is not enough. You must stretch the boundaries of love to wrap into its embrace the stranger, the people in our society who are furthest away from power. To counter the frenzy of rhetoric and the aspirations of policy that demonize these human beings, we need to love them fiercely. We need to love them fully.
Dreams Don’t Die
One day our dreams will be realized. Just not today. And not tomorrow.
And maybe not for many years. But just as hope doesn’t die, dreams don’t die.
If you’re stressed, anxious, or depressed, this is your counterintuitive medicine
How optimizing this skill can change your life – and the world.
Rabbi Sharon Brous has some extremely practical tips for how to improve what psychologists call your social health. She is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR , a Jewish community in LA. Her new book, a bestseller, is called The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World
Gifts of the Flood
There’s an eerie resonance between the Noah narrative and this week. What does Noah’s Flood teach us about navigating chaos and coming once more to land?
From Blame and Shame to Cherished Belonging
After the death of a beloved child in our community to suicide, we reaffirm our commitment to combatting shame with tenderhearted love, to meeting one another in the dark, to never giving up on each other. May Benjamin Ellis’s memory be a blessing.
Home and Hevel
Sukkot reflects our people’s ancient narrative, balancing the transience of a wandering nation and the fragility of life with our yearning for home and the Eternal Divine. How does our tradition compel us to relate to those who yearn for home, but who are left to wander?
To Save Our Democracy, We Must Tell a Better Story – Rabbi Sharon Brous | Yom Kippur 5785
There is a dominant story in America today—a story of isolation, alienation, and narrow-minded extremism, fueled by a deeply unsettling convergence of right- and left-wing antisemitism.
This story—propagated by a would-be authoritarian—plays on our worst instincts: the smallness, the fear, the ever-present sense of scarcity. And it threatens to do untold damage.
We must write something new.