Lunch & Learn: Senator Ben Allen

We welcome everyone to our Shabbat morning services at 9:30am PT, no matter their level of observance, experience, or familiarity with Hebrew. Daven with us in person at Shalhevet, or join us virtually on YouTube or Zoom. Childcare is available during Services for kids ages 2-5. Stay afterward for our kosher, vegetarian community lunch. Stop by our Capital Campaign Lunch Table to learn about the IKAR Center and how you can support our future. 8/22/2026 Noa Ellis Goldstein 8/29/2026 Archer Mekor Sroka 10/10/2026 Myla Vener 10/17/2026 Ayla Morchower 10/24/2026 Samuel Ethan & Joshua Gabriel Goldstein 11/7/2026 Lucille (Luci) Halpern-Fingerhut 11/14/2026 Henry Posalski 11/28/2026 Ezekiel Mataan Brous-Weber 12/5/2026 Samuel Rafael Marquit 12/19/2026 Finch Rhodes

In On Courage, former White House senior advisor Ami Fields-Meyer offers a deeply reported manual for how ordinary people defy authoritarianism. Written with Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Julia Angwin and built on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across five continents, the book expands their acclaimed New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?” into a practical case that even under repressive conditions, each of us holds power to help defeat autocrats — at a moment when nearly three out of four people on earth live under authoritarian rule, the highest rate since the late 1970s. Fields-Meyer joins Rabbi Sharon Brous to discuss the people at the heart of the book — a Hong Kong student who risked everything for democracy, a Caracas mother who broke with the movement that raised her, Americans who faced serious risk for dissenting in their own workplaces — and what our tradition asks of us as the walls of history close in.  

What do we do when Torah contains laws that violate our deepest moral commitments? A troubling passage from Parashat Ki Teitzei invites us to wrestle with difficult texts—and to see interpretation not as an escape from tradition, but as our obligation within it. Guest Sermon / Ki Teitzei 5786

We welcome everyone to our Shabbat morning services at 9:30am PT, no matter their level of observance, experience, or familiarity with Hebrew. Daven with us in person at Shalhevet, or join us virtually on YouTube or Zoom. Childcare is available during Services for kids ages 2-5. Stay afterward for our kosher, vegetarian community lunch. 8/15/2026 Yoon Kend 8/22/2026 Noa Ellis Goldstein 8/29/2026 Archer Mekor Sroka 10/10/2026 Myla Vener 10/17/2026 Ayla Morchower 10/24/2026 Samuel Ethan & Joshua Gabriel Goldstein 11/7/2026 Lucille (Luci) Halpern-Fingerhut 11/14/2026 Henry Posalski 11/28/2026 Ezekiel Mataan Brous-Weber 12/5/2026 Samuel Rafael Marquit 12/19/2026 Finch Rhodes