I was honored to have been invited to deliver the benediction at the Inauguration Ceremonies for Governor Ralph Northam, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, and Attorney General Mark Herring at the Virginia State Capitol, January 13, 2018. Below is the text … Continue reading
In June 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke before a large crowd in Detroit. In his speech, King argued that, despite the dangers of nonviolent resistance, “there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally … Continue reading
“Birth is a beginning/ and death a destination./ And life is a journey.” The notion that our lives are a journey, and that we, in our fallibility, might have gone off course, haunts us each Yom Kippur. On eight separate … Continue reading
JJ Grey, a contemporary rock and blues singer, once recalled a lesson his grandmother taught him: “you can’t fight darkness, so be a light.” Last month, darkness came to Virginia: An unholy alliance of white supremacists marched on Charlottesville. Just … Continue reading
…and, for that matter, all young leaders. Along with a diverse group of rabbis, I recently completed a two-year fellowship in a program called the Clergy Leadership Incubator. The Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI) trains early-career rabbis in organizational leadership, change … Continue reading
Recently, the City of New Orleans removed its Confederate monuments, prompting both celebrations and protests. The actions and their aftermath reverberated across the country and, not surprisingly, into Virginia. Protests and counter-protests erupted – violently – in Charlottesville a couple … Continue reading
Of all the enemies our ancestors faced in antiquity, perhaps none were more fearsome than the Assyrians. Around 900 BCE, Assyria began to conquer much of what was at the time the known world. The empire Assyria built stretched from … Continue reading
The Tisch