Don’t Let Your Empathy Atrophy

As we enter 5787, Rabbi Zuckerman reflects on the Jewish American experience with a story about Jonas Philips, a Jewish figure in the American Revolution, and discusses how the Jewish calendar is one of the most powerful communicators of Jewish identity that we possess.

Rabbi Zauzmer illuminates the meaning of the prayer “Hayom Harat Olam” and shares her own experience of pregnancy and expecting.

How can Jews with different relationships to Zionism remain bound to one another? Using history as his guide, Rabbi Cosgrove reflects on Jewish peoplehood, arguing that our future depends on sustaining a shared community capacious enough to hold disagreement without surrendering responsibility for one another.

What does it mean to come home to ourselves—and to reckon with the patterns, wounds, and inheritances that have shaped us? Rabbi Cosgrove reflects on teshuvah as the work of return: naming what we carry, changing what we can, and refusing to let the past determine the future.

Rabbi Koffman invites us to step back and look at our lives with a fresh perspective – and to respond to the “inconceivable surprise of living” with gratitude, prayer, and wonder.

There are many reasons why people do mitzvot. But are some reasons better than others? Rabbi Pink explores what motivates people to do Jewish actions, and how a different internal approach can help make those actions more enduring.

In the lead-up to the High Holidays, Rabbinic Intern Claire Davidson Bruder encourages us to atone for the sins we have committed by hardening our hearts, reminding us of our tradition’s demand to look our fellow humans in the eye and bear witness to their pain. 

With the memory of Dolly Parton on all of our minds, Rabbi Zauzmer leads a discussion about what we can leave behind for the next generation.

For L'dor V'dor—the Teen Oral History project—teens met with seniors to form connections, build bridges, and learn Jewish history through personal testimony. 

Rabbi Pink teaches how the mitzvah of returning lost objects is connected to the process of preparing for the High Holidays.