Blessing for the Month of Tammuz & Juneteenth

During the month of Tammuz, we enter a period in the Jewish calendar which reminds us, all too darkly, of what happens when the world that lies between us comes apart at the seams. When we turn away from, rather towards, one another and allow indifference, intolerance, and violence to grow and fill the spaces between us. This is the kind of withdrawal from the in-between that destroys lives, destroys temples, destroys worlds.

Juneteenth also carries within it a powerful reminder—of the life-denying brutality that is allowed to flourish when we retreat from our obligations to the world, and of the life-giving possibilities that become real when we lean into our responsibilities to and for each other...

For the Sake of Heaven?

By Rabbi Mónica Gomery `17
Kol Tzedek Synagogue in Philadelphia & SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva.

Parashat Korach opens with a dramatic rebellion. Korach and his co-conspirators accuse Moses: “You have gone too far! For all the community, all of them, are holy… Why do you raise yourself above God’s congregation?” (Numbers 16:3) Moses matches Korach’s aggression: “You have gone too far,” and challenges them to a duel of sorts. Each side will make incense offerings to Hashem, and whoever God chooses will be holy and preferred.

Those of us who think critically about corrupt hierarchies and abuses of power will recognize our concerns in Korach’s claims. I too consider the whole community holy. I too wonder what it was like to travel through the midbar (wilderness) in such a top-down structure, with Moses in charge. And as a rabbi who thinks often about models of leadership, the stakes feel high to me. Was Moses’s leadership becoming corrupt, or was Korach’s confrontation of it corrupt? What can we learn from this parashah about power and conflict?

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