Resources & What We're Reading, Watching & Listening To

Two years ago, I was invited to participate on the first Encounter Intensive, and I was presented with an opportunity to join 25 other Jewish communal leaders on a four-day journey to the West Bank and East Jerusalem to engage in intensive – and intense – interactions with Palestinians. I had known about Encounter since it started, when I was in Jerusalem 15 years ago. I was honored to be asked to participate, but also reticent. I felt ready to engage with the Palestinian narrative, and I was excited to do so with incredible colleagues, but…what was the agenda? And what about the optics in the fraught political reality of our work, on campus and in the fishbowl of the Jewish community in which we exist? How would it look for me to engage with Palestinians in this way?

Rabbi David Stern shares emotional and eye-opening stories that he says shook him into a new recognition of the dissonance between Palestinians and Israelis after hearing the stories first-hand from Palestinians living in the West Bank.

Our Torah portion, like many of the stories in Genesis, contains a story about family strife. It is unique, however, in how the tension is not ultimately reconciled.

Rosh Hashana sermon

Listen on SoundCloud