As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge us, people find themselves expressing the need to seek balance in this new way we are living our lives. As individuals, a community, and a nation, it wasn't necessarily easy to find balance before, and the challenges from the virus only increase the difficulty. We think about being "productive" while we are experiencing a historic time of a public health pandemic, along with deep racial pain, the accompanying social justice efforts for change, an economic crisis, loss and grief, and profound uncertainty. How do we prioritize our health - physical and emotional - and the need for rest and relaxation?

What Does Black Lives Matter mean to me? My father was born in Hope, Arkansas. A place my father would never take me to visit, no matter how much I begged and plead with him to take me with him when he returned to the south. It would be only when my grandfather passed away that my father would take his children to return to the south for his father's funeral. Many years later, I would understand why he didn't want his children to visit the south.

BLACK LIVES MATTER? Black Lives Matter.

As I allow my eyes to gaze through the complicated lens that is the history of Blacks in America, one question that always seems to wrestle itself to the surface of my mind is, "Why did it take so much and why did it take so long to abolish something that any "decent" human being could easily see was horrifically wrong?"

We are living in a time when what we choose to see can change the future of our country. What do we see in the news coverage of a protest or when we march in a protest ourselves? What do we see when we watch a video of a man being murdered? What do we see when today's date, June 19, Juneteenth, appears on our calendars? These have all happened before--do we see them differently this time?
And what do we envision for the future?

"Justice, justice shall you pursue..." (Deuteronomy 16:20)
Our commandment to pursue justice repeats the word justice (tzedek). Perhaps it is to underscore its importance. And perhaps it is to remind us to pursue justice with justice.
Jews often like to talk. We talk about our families, our texts, our holiday plans, what gives us joy and what keeps us up at night.

Last year, close to 70 people sat squeezed next to each other, enjoying food from a communal buffet, and sharing hugs, singing, and laughter as Rabbi Alana Alpert and I kicked off our Tikkun Leil Shavuot. Kids were passed from one set of loving arms to another, as were shared plates and water bottles.