Enrich Your Passover Experience

Explore a variety of ways to understand Pesakh and to immerse in its practices. 

We have curated a series of essays that open discussions and analyses of Passover by Erica Riddick, Rabbi Margie Jacobs, Rabbi Mychal Copeland, Max Buckler, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein,  Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, Rabbi Vivie Mayer, Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, z”l, Dr Shoshana Fershtman and Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein.

Reconstructing Chosenness: Voices in Conversation

Exploring meaning, mission, and belonging in our Jewish world today

Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations

Evolve is an online platform with conversation-sparking essays from thought-provoking rabbis, leaders and creators. Explore essays on key topics, as well as curricula, sermon sparks and videos that apply the best thinking to contemporary questions.

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To ensure a passionate and distinctive Jewish future, we should reclaim our foundational metaphor of “chosenness.”
It is problematic when my claim to uniqueness is such that I lose the ability to hold or respect yours.
It is important to reconstruct even the most problematic concepts that we have inherited rather than to try to excise them.
My understanding of chosenness develops from the perspective of those excluded from the Enlightenment’s putative universalism.

In times of chaos and turmoil, how can we overcome our differences to tackle problems? How can we move from our own individual thinking into the thinking of what’s the common good? Rabbi Joshua Lesser discusses the vital importance of nonprofit boards to Jewish and American life. By helping Jewish communities formulate and adopt board convenants, Lesser seeks to use Jewish wisdom to interject a bit of the sacred into the seemingly mundane business of running an organization. Healthy boards, he argues, are not just important for Jewish organizations. They are one of the arenas where people can participate in democracy on a micro level, and potentially reenergize democracy on a macro scale.

Read Rabbi Joshua Lesser’s essay, “From Passion to Purpose: How a Board Covenant Transforms Jewish Leadership” 

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Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis

Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues

Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives

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The Reconstructionist Network