Israel/Palestine
Khag HaAtzmaut Thoughts on Israel Independence Day
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Rabbi Arik Ascherman after yet another brutal physical attack on him as he seeks to protect West Banks Palestinians, shares his latest perspective.
Israel/Palestine
As West Bank Settlers Try to Take More Palestinian Land
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A message from Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Torat Tzedeck.
Jewish Wisdom
Yom Kippur Confessions and Thoughts 5780
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Rabbi Arik Ascherman provides this short and long vidui and calls on us to “‘Be the one,’ so that together we will be the many.”
2017
When Land is God
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MY WIFE REMEMBERS huddling in a bomb shelter in 1967. Whatever revisionist historians may tell us today, many in the bomb shelter were asking whether Israel was about to be destroyed. When we not only survived, but ended up with most of the Biblical land of Israel under our control, this “miraculous” victory was incredibly intoxicating. Einat and her family were among the thousands who lined up to get to the kotel (Western Wall) when it was opened for visits for the first time on the Shavuot holiday. If we were already saying in our prayers that the creation of the State of Israel was reshit tzmikhat guelateinu (the beginning of the sprouting of our redemption), this was God’s hand in history and one further step towards full redemption.
Articles
Balancing Activism and the Cosmic
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The death of my father last April caused me to reflect anew on where we agreed and where we disagreed. When I was a college student, we would debate capitalism and socialism. Over the years I came to realize that people would be much better off under the capitalist system he envisioned than under any of the capitalist or socialist realities today.