IKAR Podcasts

There’s nothing brave about regurgitating antisemitic lies. That’s not truth to power, it’s unwitting support of white power. It’s time to deconstruct these narrative fallacies, and tell a new story.

Join us for a conversation between Rabbi Sharon Brous and leaders from Breaking the Silence, an NGO providing discharged Israeli personnel and reservists a means to confidentially recount their experiences in the Occupied Territories. This is a Q&A and discussion that surrounded a screening of Mission Hebron, a short documentary by Rona Segal based on the testimony of Israeli soldiers who served in the West Bank. To see the documentary, visit our YouTube channel here.

How can we understand so called religious people aligning with a regressive politics that relishes stripping rights rather than expanding them, that honors guns over humans, fetuses over hungry children, incarceration over restorative justice, environmental devastation over stewardship? Our core theological commitments must manifest in the reality we seek to build, a society of compassion and wakefulness, love and justice. One that honors the divine image in every person.

Love matters most when our family is in danger. A love that reminds you how far you’ll fallen, a love that helps you walk away from the path of self-destruction. Avram exhibits that kind of love towards his nephew Lot, and we must too towards Israel, as they walk an increasingly dangerous path. 

Rev. Dr. Najuma Smith-Pollard, spiritual leader of Word of Encouragement Community Church, joins Rabbi Sharon Brous in conversation on recent racist and anti-Semitic incidents and how true friendship and allyship is the only way to overcome bigotry.

There is a direct line from the 1995 murder of Yitzhak Rabin to the ascendance of right wing, ultranationalist extremists in Israel today. The election this past week has me revisiting a question that has haunted me for more than 25 years: did the assassin murder a man or a movement? 

This is a recording of Rabbi David Kasher's Parsha class from November 3, 2022

Rabbi Kasher shares a surprising teaching from his new book on Torah commentary.

Rather than turn against one another, we must turn toward each another. Rather than assume that your gain is my loss, your representation is my disenfranchisement, your liberation is my oppression… we must recognize that your liberation is essential to my own. We must trust that the only way to build beloved community is together. This is the moral message of the Torah: we are our brothers’ keepers.

A new cycle of reading through the Torah! A new book! And a new season of Best Book Ever!