Passover Services: Day 1

This Pride Shabbat, we need to reckon with the current landscape for our trans siblings. We need to understand that trans people are being used as a wedge to divide Americans, and as a test case for increasing authoritarianism. What does our parsha teach us about the dangers of callousness, and what brighter, more beautiful future can we imagine?

CLICK HERE TO PLAY VIDEO “What’s happening in these attacks is a painful irony because people are conflating and holding every jew responsible for the actions or decisions of the Israeli government, which most American Jews actually oppose. And that is purely and simply racism. Antisemitism is a form of racism. And if you cannot condemn unequivocally attacks against Jews because you hold them collectively responsible for the decisions of Benjamin Netanyahu or Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir, the most hard-right ministers in Israel’s history, then you are not anti-war, anti-racist, or anti-genocide, you are just an antisemite. And it’s important for us to get really clear on that before more people are even harmed or God forbid killed.”

When trauma is acknowledged, not denied, not justified, not dismissed through comparison, only then can something new and hopeful be imagined. 

After the antisemitic murder of two young beloveds on a DC street, there are four things I know. Parashat Behar-Behukotai 5785