Choosing Peace After 9-11
Will we allow religion to lead us to violence, or will we allow it to lead us towards kindness and community?
This Week In Wisdom
Missing Cries of Shofar
If the shofar is meant to help God choose to have mercy, or help us remember and choose our better selves, how does this season “work” with the missing shofar blows?
9/11/26 and Rosh Hashanah: Days To Remember
Clal Reflects on Rosh Hashanah, the High Holidays, and the 25th Anniversary of September 11, 2001.
Who Pulls the Trigger for Us? Why American Jewry Must Confront the Ethics of Power
It is intolerable that Israeli Judaism must constantly grapple with the agonizing weight of physical force while liberal American Judaism remains comfortably disengaged.
A New-Old Currency For Celebrating Our 250th All Year Long
Imagine if we all simply agreed to start any conversation about America or American Jewish life with an articulation of the things about which we are grateful.
Two Ways of Greatness – What Jalen Brunson and Elon Musk Reveal About America’s Competing Visions of Human Excellence
What Brunson and Musk actually represent are two genuinely different theories of how greatness is constituted.
Shabbat 250: What John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison Can Teach Us
What it does do is afford a wonderful opportunity to reflect on an old debate about the place of religion in American political life—one that goes back to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
FBI Chaplains in Israel
I returned feeling grateful for the opportunity to touch the lives of those who touch so many other lives, often at moments of intense crisis.
Bearing Witness: Lessons from Then for Now
In a time of deep unrest, in a time when the problems are so big I don’t feel I can do anything, we can do this.