Parashat Eikev offers another Jewish entry point to a consideration of reparations. “Beware,” Moshe says, “lest you come to think that your good fortune is of your own doing.”
Read moreThe Plain of Threading
Where evening becomes day, light alternates with leaf, and experience becomes story.
Read moreJoseph's Bones: An Epilogue
Joseph is not asking for the transport of their physical bones. Joseph is asking the Children of Israel – asking us – to raise up, to honor, to carry forward with us, their complex and multiple qualities. Their fullness. Their selves. And that is what we are about to do. Even if it has taken 4000 years and 7000 miles to make good on Joseph’s request.
Read moreJoseph's Womb: Gender Complexity in the Story of Joseph
Most striking to me are what seem to be bold hints in the text of Torah regarding an atypicality not only in Joseph’s lived gender, but in his (or their) body. The way that the language of “womb” and “knee” gravitate to Joseph in Torah in ways that they do not toward any other men speaks loudly of Joseph’s difference.
Read moreChayei Sarah: Putting it to Rest
There is a moment
in this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, that always catches me. A moment that always strikes me in the simplicity of what it says and in the vastness of what it doesn’t say.
This week we see Isaac and Ishmael, shoulder to shoulder, burying their father. How is it possible to resist the expectation to be enemies and let go of the past's hold on us?
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