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Jewish Faith Network
Newsletter
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Thank you for joining us again for the Jewish Faith Network newsletter at the One America Movement. This month, we’re excited to share a range of resources to support you in addressing the spiritual crisis of toxic polarization and fostering unity in your community. Inside, you’ll find sermon hooks connected to this month’s Torah readings, insights from the Talmud to inspire reflection, stories from the field highlighting our ongoing work, and thought-provoking articles from around the internet. We hope these offerings provide both inspiration and practical tools for your work.
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Beginning January 11 with Parashat Vayechi, our partners at American Scripture Project will be offering Daf America, a free weekly study sheet connecting the parasha to key texts from American History. As communities enter inauguration season, we will send out a new Daf each week through the end of Exodus (3/29), to create a unique study experience that sits at the intersection of our civic responsibilities and religious commitments. We believe such study can help Jewish clergy spark conversations about democracy, civic culture, and the narratives that hold our country together. This is offered as part of the free subscription to American Scripture Project and it is designed to present a diverse set of ideas and about how citizens can process and respond to the political transition. The full American Scripture Project program can be found here, and you can contact Rabbi Michael Holzman (rabbiholzman@nvhcreston.org) with any questions. | |
Sermon Hooks for Next Month's Torah Readings | |
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Exodus 7:17
Because the Exodus story is designed as a conflict between Moses and Pharaoh on the one hand, and God and the gods of Egypt on the other hand, it is not a model of a positive interaction across a divide. However, repeated time and again is the imperative to “know” that the Eternal is God. This idea of Relationship building is key to our work in being able to reach across lines of division. If Pharaoh already knew that the Eternal was God, imagine how differently these scenes might have gone.
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Exodus 10:7
Pharaoh’s courtiers appeal to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, saying “Are you not yet aware that Egypt is lost?” They have promoted their superordinate identity as Egyptians over and above their identity as servants of Pharaoh, and they try to use this identity to appeal to Pharaoh to change his behavior.
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Exodus 16:17-20
Ex 16:17-20 - When the Israelites gather manna in the wilderness, some gather much, and some gather little, but when they measure it, they find that everyone ended up with the same amount. When we consider group norms and how the Israelites were establishing their norms in the wilderness, we can see through the manna that God was trying to establish a norm of obedience and equality.
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Exodus 20:1-14
While the Ten Commandments are not the first commandments given to the people, here they form part of a specific covenant that, in its full expression, will establish the way of life for the people. In this sense, it goes beyond group norms, since the rules are made explicit. However, in the forming of the Ten Commandments, we get a real sense of sacred values in the way that some of these commandments are presented as due to the deity and some to other humans.
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Yevamot 65b [link to https://www.sefaria.org/Yevamot.65b.6?lang=bi]
teaches us that we have an obligation to speak to someone who will listen to us, but in addition we have an obligation not to speak to someone who will not listen to us. As we work to bring in-group moderation through a wise and loving application of tochecha/rebuke, we should remember this teaching. We cannot do tochecha if we do it in such a way that the receiver will not listen.
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Rabbi Neil Tow recounts how the One America Movement came to his community and helped foster understanding between diverse faith groups.
Read the sermon here.
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Articles From the Internet | |
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January 23 at 11:00 eastern - a zoom session with Mohammed Darawshe, the Director of Strategy for the Center for Shared Society in Givat Haviva. He will talk about how Jewish-Arab relations in Israel are in crisis and how we should focus on de-escalation instead of confrontation.
Register Today!
May 5-7 - One America Movement Summit in Tulsa, OK
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Rabbi Frederick Reeves is the Director of Jewish Programs at the One America Movement.
Fred served pulpits in Atlanta and Chicago before coming to the One America Movement. He also was the president of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Interfaith Council, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, and the Chicago Association of Reform Rabbis. In those roles, he has been active Jewishly and across faith lines working to bring positive change to our society. Fred graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia with a degree in French Literature. He completed a Master’s in Hebrew Letters and received rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Learn More About Our Work | |
The One America Movement's mission is to build a network of people of faith who speak and act against toxic polarization in America in accordance with their faith tradition. | | | | |
