CollaboraSTORY: Gathering the Many Parts of Ourselves
There’s a story in the Talmud about a famous rabbi who declares that no student may enter the study hall whose inside does not match their outside - in Hebrew, who are not “tocho k’varo.”
What does this mean that their inside must match their outside? To me this sounds like this rabbi is asking for there to be no discrepancy between who these students know themselves to be and who they show themselves to be. This also sounds like it requires a Jewish space in which students feel safe enough to be bold enough to be fully who they are.
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Turn it and Turn it - Rabbi Adina's Kol Nidre Drash
Can we allow ourselves the unfettered freedom to play - with how we view others in our lives? With how we see the world? To continually be in a state of curiosity and ask, even in the times in which we feel most sure, the question: what else could this be?
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What can we glean from the Bible’s disturbing passages?
By Rabbi Adina Allen
The Torah we have inherited is not a nice, neat, easy-to-follow guidebook for how to live a good life. Rather than an instruction manual, Torah is a mirror. We gaze upon it and are forced to encounter the image that is reflected back.
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The Blossoming of the Beloved Community (Parshat Korach, Numbers 16:1-18:32)
By Rabbi Adina Allen
As this week’s parsha begins, Korach—along with 250 chieftains of the community—criticizes Moses and Aaron for devising a system of religious practice in which only a select few are designated for Divine service. Where there was once an unmediated relationship, there are now layers—both physical and metaphorical—between the majority of the people and God. “Kol ha edah kula kedoshim u’bitocham Adonai—All of the community is holy, all of them, and the Divine is within/among them,” Korach and his followers assert. “Why then do you raise yourselves above the community?”
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