A city council member’s chief of staff recalled a walk home from school that became an involuntary trip to the police station, on suspicion of truancy. A congressman described working with the Congressional Black Congress on budget proposals — only for white colleagues to reject them every year. New York’s attorney general comforted her teenage…
As a rabbi watching President Trump standing, Bible in hand, in front of Washington DC’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, I wondered what scriptural verse the President could draw on for inspiration. We were, as we remain, in the midst of a national crisis. A double pandemic, Covid-19 and the virus of systemic racism. The moment…
The experience of watching, on video, George Floyd desperately plead for his life — and yet still suffer the cruelest of deaths in the middle of the street in the middle of the day in the middle of America — has collectively galvanized millions of us. We’ve realized that we are obligated to struggle against…
Welcome to the first of what we hope will be a recurring feature in which we explore a passage from the Talmud that resonates with current events. The goal is not to determine “the Jewish view” but to prompt thought and discussion. You can find more about this passage — Sanhedrin 74a-b — at the…
In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller,” the renowned critical theorist Walter Benjamin contrasts the “story” with the morning news, the primary mode in which information was disseminated in his era. Benjamin was not interested in the idea of a story: what makes something a story, how stories work. He was instead interested in the tradition…
Jason Rosenberg went out Tuesday night to protest in New York City. He returned home Wednesday morning with staples in his head, a broken arm and a summons. A program manager at the 92nd Street Y and an activist with ACT UP, he’s now trying to heal and considering legal action against the NYPD. This…
“Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world.” (Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5) Los Angeles and other cities across the United States are experiencing riots and social unrest the likes of which we haven’t…
Yesterday I was invited to a webinar called “How to make sure you are not raising the next Amy Cooper.” It is one of countless calls in the past few days about how to not be or not raise a racist. These lessons are essential. White America is just now beginning to learn how to…
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