This Pesah, I am thinking of Shirat Hayam, the progressive Jewish community in Odesa, Ukraine. Myself and IKARite Julia Berg had the opportunity in 2019 to help them put together a Pesah weekend retreat, get to know Jews of all ages in Odesa, and explore the rich Jewish history and vibrant Jewish revitalization in the town. The most inspiring part of the trip was seeing the passion and excitement by this community for rediscovering their Judaism. After living for so many years without the ability to practice religion, Ukraine’s Jews are reconnecting to their roots in beautiful ways.

We will continue to amplify the voices of the many Israelis and Palestinians who are working together to end the violence and terror, and to lay the foundation for a just and sustainable resolution to this conflict.

We affirm our support for trans and non-binary people, created in God’s own image. And we are committed to ensuring a sense of love, safety and community both inside IKAR and in the broader world.

We greet the news of the guilty verdicts in Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd with relief. This is a moment of great significance for our country.

On Tuesday, eight women were murdered by a young white man on a shooting rampage in Atlanta. The brutal and calculated nature of these massacres is particularly painful as it highlights the growing violence targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in this country, especially over the past year.

I pray that we are able to begin a new chapter of accountability, honesty and justice for all. Are we ready for the kind of spiritual transformation that this will require? Are we prepared to examine how our own fear and silence might have contributed to this poisoned reality? Are we willing to do the work to replace narratives and norms of white supremacy and toxic masculinity with a new narrative of redemption?

On Shabbat, we learned of the death of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Britain and an important teacher for all of us. Rabbi Sacks was respected and beloved across the Jewish world. In R’ Mel Gottlieb’s words: R’ Sacks’s blend of Torah scholarship and academic acumen allowed him to speak to broad audiences and interfaith circles relating to the moral issues of our time and the unique charge of the Jewish people…His unique voice, novel and insightful ideas, personal warmth and charm will be sorely missed. 

Last week, a friend quoted me in a blessing to his daughter on her bat mitzvah. He shared that I once said the following:

Hope is not naïve. It’s not some opiate to dull the pain of an oppressive reality. Hope may be the greatest act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and a culture of despair.

Today is Juneteenth, a day to celebrate the abolition of slavery and Black people’s fight for liberation in the United States. The day commemorates the date, more than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, that enslaved people in Galveston Texas learned that slavery had been abolished.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin held a video conference with Jewish community leaders on what is currently going on in America and in Israel. Here are Rabbi Sharon Brous’s remarks.

It has now been a week of rage, grief and trauma in the streets of our cities, following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. We are in the midst of a rebellion, an uprising against centuries of injustice. The tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, just over these past few months, reveal the normalization of hatred and fear of Black people in America, the danger of aggressive police action, and the profound need for a nation-wide reckoning with our painful history of racism.

It was a difficult week for the Jewish community.

On Tuesday, we watched in anguish as the news unfolded of an antisemitic act of terror in a kosher market in Jersey City, committed by a radicalized member of the Black Hebrew Israelites. Six people died—once again pointing to the toxic and deadly combination of ideologies of hatred and easy access to weapons of war.

Hanukkah in a Time of Renewed Hatred: A Note From Our Rabbis

Our practice of Hanukkah is rooted in the story of the persecution of Jews for public displays of their Jewishness. We’ve been telling that story for generations, but in the relative safety of the United States, Hanukkah became a fun and festive celebration, complete with spinning dreidels, frying latkes and kitschy parody videos.

But this year, Hanukkah has frighteningly coincided with a spike in the antisemitic attacks that have been building over the past several years.

IKAR Rabbis & Leadership Respond to Tragic Poway Synagogue Shooting.

“I ask God to give us all strength. And I ask us to see: raw hatred combined with the proliferation of deadly weapons will continue to unleash unthinkable human misery. God can weep with us, but only we—through acts of love and courage—can stop this madness.” – Rabbi Brous