Chevre, Yesterday, Sue C and I attended the interfaith, interracial celebration of Dr. King at Stone Temple Baptist Church in North Lawndale. The program was cosponsored by the church, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the JUF, and the North Lawndale...

Chevre, It's been a trying time, of late, and it appears to be getting worse instead of better - continued acts of violence around the country aimed at Jews, people of color, white churches. I have no solutions or action plans, but I know that we can come together to...

Chevre, I'm taking a little time off and not writing a complete post this week. Instead, there are two videos that I want to share with you. The first is of Sacha Baron Cohen delivering his acceptance speech upon receiving the Anti-Defamation League's International...

Chevre, As I articulated in my D’var Torah on Yom Kippur morning, white American racism is much more substantial - and profoundly disturbing - than things like “I get nervous when I’m walking down a city street and see someone black walking towards me.” My learning...

Chevre, We've enjoyed, if I can use that word, several programs of high quality and profound impact during these first few months of our community's exploration of American racism. My conception of our learning process is this: we'll begin by learning about the...

Chevre, What do the following things have in common? Sexual impropriety, harassment and rape in places ranging from the family home to the workplace to universities to whole industries to public spaces like streets and parks. Sexual abuse and molestation by priests...

Chevre, For most of us, I would guess, it’s not so hard on Thanksgiving to bring to mind many things for which we are grateful. For some of us, though, that might be a little more difficult. A recent article by Prof. David DeSteno, a psychologist teaching at...

Chevre, Reading this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, my eye was caught by something I’d never noticed before. It arises from reading two separate stories as a related pair. Story #1: God & Abraham, Sodom & Gomorrah Sodom and Gomorrah are thoroughly corrupt....

Chevre, We are the stories that we tell. And those stories are selective. We cannot recall every event. And we cannot recall every detail of every event or the telling would become a replica of the event itself, taking the same amount of time as the original. In other...