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Dear Governor Murphy, Speaker Coughlin, and President Scutari: You Failed New Jersey’s Jews

There are moments in Jewish life when a Rabbi’s words or message to their community must comfort, moments when they must persuade, and moments when they must confront. This Shabbat is not a moment for soft language or careful equivocation. The title of this message is not reckless; it is deliberate. The title names responsibility without demonizing motives, addresses actions and outcomes without impugning souls, and speaks to those in power rather than speaking as partisans to opponents. At a time when antisemitism is rising and Jewish fear is endlessly contextualized rather than addressed, gentleness can become a form of evasion. Religious leadership demands truth-telling as well as compassion, especially when that truth is uncomfortable. To speak plainly now is to model for our community that Jewish fear does not need to be endlessly translated into more palatable language before it is taken seriously — and that Jewish safety and dignity are not negotiable. Last Friday, the New J...
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Remembering Joseph, Remembering January 6

This week we begin the book of Shemot , the story of our people’s descent into slavery and, ultimately, their redemption. And the Torah opens with a single, chilling verse: “Vayakam melech chadash al Mitzrayim, asher lo yada et Yosef.” “A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” It is one of the most consequential sentences in the Torah, and one of the most disturbing. How could Egypt not know Joseph? Joseph was not a minor figure lost to history. He saved Egypt from famine. He reorganized its economy. He was, in effect, the architect of Egypt’s prosperity. And yet, suddenly, the Torah tells us that a new king arose who “did not know” him. Our traditional commentators are almost unanimous in their understanding that this was not ignorance. It was willful forgetting. It was a conscious decision to erase an inconvenient past in order to justify a new and dangerous present. That act of historical distortion is what sets slavery in motion. Oppression doesn’t begin wi...
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When Hatred Is Excused as Youth: The Moral Weight of Adult Speech

Earlier this week, I came across an important story that reveals something deeply broken in the moral conversation of our time. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer, recently said he was “delighted” to welcome back to Britain Alaa Abd El-Fattah.   El-Fattah an Egyptian-British activist, had been imprisoned in Egypt, and his release had long been championed by human-rights organizations. The controversy erupted when past social-media posts by Abd El-Fattah resurfaced recently. In these posts he praised the killing of “Zionists” which is indistinguishable from the celebration of violence against Jews. These were not comments made during adolescence, or in some distant, immature past. They were written when he was in his late twenties and early thirties, old enough to understand precisely what such words mean, and how such rhetoric has historically translated into real-world harm. The outrage that followed was predictable and justified. Words that celebrate viole...
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When Darkness Grows, We Increase the Light

For my Shabbat message this week, I am sharing the remarks that I delivered at the public Chanukiyah lighting at Van Saun Park last Saturday night, on the seventh night of Chanukah .   Good evening, friends, neighbors, and honored guests. Thank you for being here tonight: to our local elected officials, community leaders, and to everyone who has come to share in this moment. Your presence matters, and it sends a powerful message that this community values faith, freedom, and one another. Chanukah is often described as a holiday about light. But it is really about what light does. More than two thousand years ago, the Jewish people faced a moment when our identity, our values, our safety, and our right to live according to our conscience were under threat. The miracle of Chanukah was not only that a small amount of oil burned longer than expected. The deeper miracle was that a small, determined community refused to disappear and chose hope over despair. This year, that m...
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This Is the Chanukah Video That Matters

Three years ago, I sent a Shabbat message to the community titled Watch This Two Minute Chanukah Video . While admittedly, not among my deepest or most theologically significant messages, it was among my favorites. In that message, I compiled several amusing Chanukah videos flying across the Jewish side of the internet, while at the same time suggesting a new, far more significant one for your review. That Shabbat message was the most read message since I began the current blog five years ago, receiving at least four times as many readers as usual. This year, I want you to take several minutes and view a new, and much different video . Believe me, you will remember it far more than any other you might see this year.  With the permission of the families of six Israeli hostages murdered by Hamas in August 2024, the Israeli government recently released a video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, and Alex Lobanov lighting Chanukah ...
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What a Fight Over a License Plate Taught Me About Our Torah Reading

As many of you know, I began my Rabbinical career in Knoxville Tennessee.   Those were important years for me, and even though I have lived in Paramus for the past 30 years, I do try to keep up with the news there. An article about a legal matter in Tennessee that is being appealed to the US Supreme Court appeared in my newsfeed earlier this week. It concerns a battle over a vanity license plate that raised significant First Amendment issues concerning the regulation of personal and government speech. The license plate consists of seven characters.   Yet those seven characters have become the basis of a major case because different people read the same message in radically different ways. One person intended a playful reference; others interpreted it as crude or offensive. The story reminded me of something profoundly true about the moment in which we live. It also illuminated something in this week’s Torah reading, Parshat Vayeshev , that I had not seen before. And it en...
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ChatGPT, Copilot, And Google Can’t Save Your Soul

I read an article recently in a magazine that caters to the evangelical Christian community. It seems that a new digital awakening is unfolding among the faithful. I’m not talking about using AI (artificial intelligence) to research Biblical topics or discover new truths and ideas about God, faith, or the meaning of life. I’m talking about something far more significant — and far more morally complex. There are now AI-powered apps that allow you to “text with Jesus,” or talk with a variety of Biblical personalities. And they respond. And it seems to be catching on. What could possibly go wrong? I must remind you, though, that these apps are not real. Artificial intelligence is a powerful system of computational techniques that imitates human intelligence. It produces language, ideas, and images by analyzing enormous amounts of data. That is part of why we love it. But it does not feel, understand, believe, or take responsibility. It can mimic a person or personality, but it can n...
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