IKAR Podcasts

This summer, we’ve become a city of picket lines, with more than 100,000 workers out on strike. Though the particulars of each strike might differ, screenwriters, actors, hotel employees, and city staffers are unified in demanding greater respect from their employers and the right to a sustainable livelihood. The Torah is clear that the dangerous gap between the power of the employer and the worke...

Our Torah teaches clearly that during war you cannot cut down enemy trees. How does that impact our understanding of the fires ravaging Maui? The horrible toll of colonization and climate change is all around us, what are we called to do?

Within the story of a technical, 2nd century, out-of-the-box legal maneuver is a much greater lesson about the dangers of a fracturing social reality. It’s a cautionary tale about what’s at stake when a society is perilously far from its foundational ideals. A tale, sadly, as modern as it is ancient.   

What if what changes us are not in the earthquake, the wind, the fire, but the tiny, almost indiscernible moments in-between? Heading into the holiest time of year, amidst so many rapturous challenges, let’s see what we can learn when we pay attention to the small stories.

When we say 'Hear O, Israel,' are we really listening?

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets protesting a proposed judicial overhaul that will dangerously reduce the power of the Supreme Court. Isaiah’s message today, on Shabbat Hazon, a Shabbat of vision, challenges to the people to take action and choose a path toward hope, not disaster.

The underexplored Jewish number of 42 traces our journey from slavery to freedom and deepens our relationship with God. What can we learn from Moshe’s experiences of that number to help inform our own journeys with God, freedom, and legacy?

There is no justice in answering violence with more violence. It’s not only that the death penalty is ridden with racism and gross inequity, and that every execution potentially risks the life of an innocent. It’s that all people—even those capable of great harm—have infinite worth, and we all—even those most set in their ways—possess the capacity for growth and change. None of us has the right to...

What can Aaron’s rod teach us about this parashah, her person and our lives?

The sin of the spies sent to assess the Promised Land? These princes couldn't fathom sharing power. That failure of moral imagination cost a whole generation, condemned to wander, landless and vulnerable for four decades before entering the land. Like so many people of privilege after them, the spies preferred that everyone suffer rather than share the abundance equitably and fairly. Let us not ma...

(Trigger Warning: Discussion of teenage suicidal ideation. Save and share this number: 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for when you need it.) Those feelings of aloneness, or differentness, or social irrelevance are as old as time. In Aaron, something beautiful and eternal was born from the heartache. What about in us? The reminder that together we can beat back the darkness... by honoring the...

So many LGBTQ+ people have been hurt by religious leadership and institutions. We have the power to offer healing.

Led by R' Morris Panitz, Jen Bailey, Alex Couto + Jessica Cabot

The Dynamic Way We Dance Ourselves into Being: Creation Revealed. Revelation Created. Led by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson.

Vera Blossom, Aimee Bender, Ann Bohrer, and Mel Weisberger in conversation, moderated by Lorne Buchman. How do we experience the dynamic of the creative and the revelatory in our work and how do we parse the difference between the two (if at all)? Can the dynamic itself shed light on how we might “prepare for Revelation”?

The mystics believe that every soul corresponds to a letter in the Torah. And, if a letter is missing, erased, or smudged, we can’t continue reading from the scroll until that letter is restored to its vibrancy. Anti-trans bills, including the two signed this past week, represent a conscious and coordinated attempt to erase trans and non-binary people from our communities and collective story. It’...

The word for brain isn't even in the Torah. But a lot of what is in the Torah presumes a functioning brain and even asks us to use it in certain specific ways. In particular, the brain is directly implicated by the whole realm that we call belief or faith. Judaism, like many religions, asks us to believe in certain things. Actually, in Judaism case, it doesn't just ask. It commands. We're commande...

Despite the many challenges the Jewish people face today, many believe that our greatest difficulty is our inability to coexist peacefully among ourselves. In our studies, we will focus on the theme of embattled siblings, which pervades the book of Genesis. We will draw a line from these narratives to the Jewish people today, noting, and suggesting possible responses to, the enduring affliction of...

It’s the presence and prospect of death in our midst that makes life so precious. It’s the awareness that there’s a thin line separating it all that summons us back into life. The lungs that breathe with you, the heart that beats for you, the blood that sustains you defines both the beginning and the end of our stories. They belong to each other- just as death belongs to life and grief belongs to...

Reparations Now: A Conversation on the CA Reparations Task Force's Findings and Proposals with Member Dr. Shery Grills, Rabbi Aryeh Cohen and Reverend Eddie Anderson.

For millennia, we’ve tried to understand how Aaron, Moshe’s brother, remained silent, even acquiescent after suffering unimaginable loss. Some say his heart turned to stone—he simply could no longer feel. Prophetic grief, in contrast, is born at the intersection of heartache and fury, and rages against reality. When experienced by not only by individuals but by the collective, bursts of prophetic...