Reb Arthur explores a story of Jacob’s great shift from Heel to Godwrestler. As hard as that shift was, it is still much much harder for an entire people to do teshuvah for its most drastic and public sins.

Jumping the track: When one thing seems certain, when destiny seems like settled fact, and then all of a sudden facts give way to something totally new and unpredictable - unsettled potential. 

Rabbi Nate observes, that’s what happens in the Purim story. And that if we look wide-eyed enough at our own world, that’s what happens all around us, too.

One year ago today on the Jewish calendar, over 200 people gathered in the Bay Area for The Shalom Center’s actifest, the Tent of Mourning - a space of ritualized grief and mourning for anyone whose heart was tender and open enough to be grieving both Palestinians and Israelis.

Some scholars say the story in the Scroll of Esther is a satire against stupid and tyrannical power, which we have more than enough of scattered around us right now. 

Rabbi Arthur shares a piece by Jeffrey Dekro, reflecting on the unprecedented Feb. 28, 2025 Oval Office encounter between President Trump and Vice President JD Vance and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine: “the moment when the US inescapably and willfully changed course and abandoned its traditional embrace of democracy and justice. “

Moved by the Feb. 28th day of national boycott being promoted by a number of national groups, R’ Arthur has a proposal for a a stronger moral and Jewish imprint to the no-spending aspect of the protest.

These days, Rabbi Nate sees midrash everywhere. And as we approach Adar, a season of upside-downness, The Shalom Center also brings you two incredible programs that we hope will meet us in the upside-down and ordain us in our disorientation.

For years, Rabbi Arthur wondered why we continue to read one of the most terrible chapters of Torah: the Israelites’ genocide of the Midianites. But a few years ago, he realized a reason to keep it.

Rabbi Arthur looks at the implications of the biblical story of the birth of the whole human species takes an everyday medical event as a model for the Creation of Humanity.

Rabbi Nate asks, on this Tu B’Shvat, as the proverbial sap (in each of us) and the physical sap (in some climates), begins to rise again in the trees, might we understand that sap as the substance of imagination? Some opportunities for action and connection follow…

In Chapter 3 of Ancient Torah for the 22nd century, R’ Arthur continues his new look at the Creation Story.

R’ Arthur continues his “Torah of Questions”, with a second chapter looking at the Creation Story.

In this moment we are grateful to be able to share with you some touchpoints of inspiration and opportunities for action to help meet the moment, as we reach to history to reaffirm our commitment to stand for each other and for justice, finding opportunities to meaningfully and collectively cultivate wholeness.

R’ Arthur on creating “a Torah of Questions, not of answers” for the 22d century, starting now.

However long it takes, we will never stop pursuing and praying for the thriving of all creation, including all humans in Israel and Palestine. May yesterday’s agreement be a step in that direction, regardless of future back-steps that may occur.

The Shalom Center is proud and humbled to share, in collaboration with Dr. Susannah Heschel, a Heschel reader featuring timely, hand-selected prophetic texts from her father, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, along with a live webinar next Thursday, where Dr. Susannah Heschel and Rabbi Nate DeGroot will be in conversation on those texts and this moment.

Our Hanukkah narrative typically focuses only on the post-solstice period, the Festival of Lights. What about the pre-solstice period, the Festival of Darkness?

“There is a strong current that asserts that social justice urgency requires the speediest of responses,” writes Rabbi Nate, as he considers what it means to disrupt that current.

R’ Arthur reflects on the role of “Prophetic Envoy”, and the mottos newly guiding him in “speaking to the best of how I can hear the Spirit, as close as I can get my ears and heart and soul to hear its music.”

Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect writes, “More Trump screwball nominations are going down, and he belatedly agrees to let the FBI vet nominees—meaning that still more will fall.”