Rabbi Eliezer Finkelstein, Bais Abraham Congregation
• Published June 12, 2025
As the Children of Israel leave Mount Sinai, in preparation for their journey to the Land of Canaan, the Torah tells us that: “And they departed from the mountain of the Lord three days’ journey.” (10:33) Commentators explain that this means that...
Baseball great Satchel Paige has been quoted as saying, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”
The answer would be an alarmingly high number for some friends and me after a recent lunch.
Let me process the trauma.
Seven...
I am Black. I am Jewish. I work in the field of hate crimes not only as a professional who responds to incidents, builds coalitions and educates others but as someone who has lived their reality. I carry it in my skin. In my breath. In my children’s...
For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of developing and teaching a course titled “Israeli Politics in an Era of Polarization” at Washington University, as an Israel Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies...
Though I have always cared about the future of Israel and Palestine, studying the conflict used to cause me to feel hopeless and powerless. I felt like I would never know enough to be able to contribute to nuanced discussion, much less reimagine the...
What should Israel do when the Status-Quo is anything but?
When David Ben Gurion drafted the Status-Quo Agreement following Israel’s independence in 1948, it aimed to codify Israel’s identity as a home for observant Jews: It asserted Shabbat...
Imagine sitting in the crowd of a wedding as two women exchange vows, or witnessing a Jewish partner pledge their commitment to their Muslim beloved. Envision next a ceremony unbound by ritual in which two secular Jews join in matrimony through legal...
My friend has a little wooden sign in her kitchen that says, “Sorry for the mess, but we live here.” It always makes me smile because it acknowledges that life is often a messy business.
Between the kids leaving crumpled up homework,...
A rabbi’s letter to Jewish doctors
I have just returned from a three-day conference in Washington, D.C. — Zionist Rabbinic Coalition. The ZRC rabbis are Orthodox, Reform and Conservative, among others. The ZRC mission is to support Israel and to...
I collected more signatures than any other volunteer in Missouri to get Amendment 3 on the ballot to overturn Missouri’s abortion ban. I left it all on the field, and I’m ready to do it again now that our legislators are refusing to respect the will...
My daughter is a junior at Columbia University. Periodically, I’ve asked her whether she worried about antisemitism on campus. No, she says. And when I point to reports of protesters demonizing and harassing Jewish students, she holds her ground.
She...
I used to be an active social justice legislator, a progressive liberal activist for years.
On Oct. 7, 2023, I became just a Jew.
As coordinated protests cheering on Hamas sprouted like wildfires mere hours after the historic terrorist attack in Israel...
