Netivot Shalom supports families in East Oakland! This year, we are collecting for teens: sports equipment, gift cards, movie passes, hard/gloves/scarves, college apparel and more!



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A Wounded Friend: A Rabbinic Response to the New Black Lives Matter Platform

A Wounded Friend: A Rabbinic Response to the New Black Lives Matter Platform
(c) Rabbi Menachem Creditor
http://rabbicreditor.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-wounded-friend-rabbinic-response-to.html

I had a beautiful day today. I stood with  my sister, a passionate rabbi serving the U.S. Navy as a chaplain, at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. We remembered our grandfather of blessed memory, who fought for America and shared hard-earned wisdom with his children and grandchildren.

I looked to my right and saw the Washington Monument. Looked to my left at the Lincoln Memorial. I read quotes engraved on massive stones. And I felt, to my core, one sad feeling: too much war.

Too. Much. War.

The quotes and certain retellings of history would have me believe that we fought for pure purposes: we fought for religious freedom, we fought to end slavery, we fought for freedom for all humanity, we fought to end tyranny. But it's also true that we fought (and fight) for economic interests. It&…
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A Prayer for the #UCLA Community after a #Shooting

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A Prayer for the #UCLA Community after a #Shooting
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Please, please, please God, let this end! Make us servants that finally remember that to serve You is to save each other.
May there be no more violence. May these unceasing tears find their ways into the walls and halls and servants of justice. And if those who are called to lead do no not chart a path toward life, toward safety, toward common sense, remind us that we choose our leaders. We choose our leaders. These coming days this coming year, every vote and every law and every lobbiest - they are called now and tomorrow, and forevermore: choose life.
In the name of all our fallen, innocent students and teachers and pastors and caregivers and police officers and young black men and women and mothers and grandfathers and nurses and fathers and children: it is enough. It is more than we can bear.
Guns are ugliness. The right to defend oneself is not to be corrupted into the freedom to kill another, to worship…
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Committed to Home: Reflections from Israel: 5 Years, 2 Years, and 1 Year Ago Today - And Today

Committed to Home: Reflections from Israel: 5 Years, 2 Years, and 1 Year Ago Today - And Today
© Rabbi Menachem CreditorI. Five Years Agojust entered yad vashem's valley of the communities, saw my ancestral community (moldova) listed, and I'm lost.  where/when is here?staring at a boxcar with suddenly, intentionally stopped tracks that today point to (and, oy, would that they had led to) the forests of jerusalem.  no words... my heart is devastated once again.a grandson, a dear soul, spoke of his grandparents' legacy as partizans from vilna.  when we recited the el maleh (prayer for memory), we added the words "those who fought" to the passive "those who were murdered." moved, afraid, and pulled by the commitment to act, and what must continue to mean for Jews today.the irony (and tactile education) at yad vashem of being forced to wait in lines to watch footage of jews waiting in drastically different kinds of lines as I pass guided tours in hebrew, e…
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