IKAR Podcasts

Holiness is recognizing that what looks like the whole story is always, necessarily, only part of the story. It's the stretch that moves us beyond what we know and what we’ve seen and into what we can imagine and dream.

Weekly Parsha Study with Rabbi David Kasher from 5.2.2024. Full unedited class: https://youtu.be/O-gaUHURJBA Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/562111?lang=bi

With Auschwitz Survivor Ella Mandel and Amit, Zeve, and Oren Zilberstein, Jason Neidleman, and Alexia Gyorody, the second, third, and fourth generation of family members who both survived and perished in the Shoah. As living survivor numbers dwindle, we will explore together how we can understand and hold their experiences in ways that co-create a more just, humane and dignified future for one another and our world. Co-produced by Peanut Productions. Videos by The Righteous Conversations Project: - To Life: The Ella Mandel Story created in collaboration with Sinai Akiba - Dreams of Yisrael: The Story of Yisrael Zilberstein created in collaboration with IKAR Limudim

We must have zero tolerance for violent and racist rhetoric in our Jewish community. We must support the birth of a new mixed multitude: those who reject extremism, who reject the violent, reductive idea that Palestinians and Jews must be eternal enemies. That one’s victory necessitates another’s victimhood, or even worse: elimination. This mixed multitude is made of people who know that we do not undermine our own sorrow or betray our own people when we see one another, those who understand that our fates are all tied up in one another.

The protest movement has unleashed a virulent and dangerous antisemitism that endangers Jews, threatens democracy, and undermines the fight for justice and liberation for Palestinians. We must do better. What we need is a movement fueled by empathy and moral imagination. One that recognizes that both peoples have suffered terribly. That neither is leaving. That a just future is possible for everyone.

Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/558262?lang=bi

The free person, awake and humble, can acknowledge the truth that emerges from various even contradictory perspectives. This is not a sign of weakness, but of spiritual liberation. Perhaps that the very essence of freedom is growing in spaciousness.

How can we ensure that the Passover Seder is not performative, but transformative? When we open our doors to those who are hungry, something in our hearts opens too. This is how we begin to write a new liberation story. Since October 7, The New Israel Fund has been funding emergency support and resettlement for Israelis forced from their homes, and they have been supporting Israelis and Palestinians working together for a just future. They have now launched a campaign to feed the people of Gaza living at the brink of famine through the World Central Kitchen and The International Rescue Committee. The humanitarian crisis there is a moral catastrophe, and it is a Jewish moral obligation to feed those who are hungry. I hope you’ll join me in support of this campaign.

Source Sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/556558?editor=1

Kabbalat Shabbat dinner discussion with sisters Danielle and Galeet Dardashti from The Nightingale of Iran Podcast

This week we are entering into the new Hebrew month of Nisan. The rabbis debate whether this month or Tishrei (the month with Rosh HaShanah) are the beginning of the year. Some say both. Creation is a process. As we look ahead to the new month we also look back at the last six months - what seeds were planted that we can reap now? What seeds can we plant now to harvest something new in Tishrei? Let's get started.

Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/554948?editor=1

A Priestly ritual offers a path toward spiritual preparation for Passover

Live, for a day, without all the answers, without all the assumptions about each other that cast a giant shadow over how we relate to one another. Who knows what kind of humanity might emerge from such a day, from such a world?

The Purim story reminds us that the real danger is when overt meets latent antisemitism. And in a culture steeped in antisemitism, literally no one is safe. The bulwark against authoritarianism is a multiracial, multifaith coalition, and that coalition is broken today, and risks being fractured beyond repair. We must sound the alarm.

Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/551802?lang=bi

Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/550092?editor=1