Rabbi Leiah Moser

"As if?"

I think the problem there is that this plan would require said billionaire to be concerned with improving the world, as opposed to endlessly hoarding resources in a fruitless quest to fill the gaping hole in their soul.

I am so glad I'm not the only one who's been having this thought.

Jews for Food Aid for Gaza Jewish people support food aid for families in Gaza and an immediate end to the Israeli government’s food aid blockade. #JewsForFoodAidForPeopleInGaza

Signal boosting this petition.

They’ve been actively working to remove child labor laws wherever they can throughout the country.

Interested in people's opinions: What would you be interested in seeing from a progressive Jewish podcast? As in, what would actually get you to tune in and listen, as opposed to thinking, "oh, that's nice" and scrolling past.

a space ship is flying through a starry sky Alt: The USS Enterprise is flying through a starry sky

If you see this, post your getaway vehicle

I know it's kind of dumb, but I always feel this tremendous sense of accomplishment whenever I manage to figure out something technical. Like I just figured out how to set my Bluesky handle to the domain name of my website, and I think that's extremely cool.

Writing A D’var Torah

One thing I've always liked about being a congregational rabbi is the way this role mixes the tachlit with the tachlis. To risk ruining the joke by explaining it, tachlit is a Hebrew word which means "end" or "ultimate." In Jewish philosophical and mystical texts it sometimes…

On Being a “Trans Rabbi”

For a long time I have wrestled with my identity as a “trans rabbi.” In a sense, the case is very clear and unambiguous — I am a rabbi, and I am a transgender woman, no question about that. So why do I sometimes instinctively hesitate for a moment before describing myself…

Two Birds In a Field

When someone afflicted with tzaraat — a mysterious, possibly supernatural skin disease which causes ritual impurity — finds themselves healed, the Torah establishes a process whereby they begin to be assimilated back into the community. Initially, the priest joins them outside…

Parts of Creation

From the Zohar, parashat Toldot: Come and see: Everyone who busies themselves with the Torah, they preserve the world and preserve every single one of God’s works in its proper form. And there is not a single part of the human body which does not have an aspect of creation which…

I have to hand it to you, that is a really great snail.

Aaron’s Silence

This past weekend on Shabbat I spoke a little bit about the challenge of Aaron's silence. If you recall, in parashat Shemini, the dedication of the mishkan (the portable sanctuary constructed by the Israelites in the wilderness) is interrupted by a terrible calamity when Aaron's…

Okay, fair enough. Send me a message and we'll talk about it.

Okay this conversation is getting too complex to carry on in a public microblogging forum. I believe there may be some sort of direct messaging system on here that we could use?

Yeah, I'm just hearing about that controversy now, and it does trouble me. But what I'm a little confused about is that from what I can see WordPress.com is also committed to a basically laissez-faire freedom of speech policy (i.e. wordpress.com/freedom-of-s...). Is there a difference I'm missing?

“Establish the work of our hands…”

Holding on to the value of our work in a volatile world. Being a congregational rabbi gives you a very particular perspective on the world’s events. People tend to share things with me about what’s going on in their lives, and in the lives of their relatives.…

"Establish the work of our hands..." Holding on to the value of our work in a volatile world.

I've been exploring Substack as an alternative to WordPress. Just put up the first new post: daggadol.substack.com/p/establish-...

We can only hope.

I've actually been doing some research into practical kabbalah lately. It's interesting stuff!

Is anybody else not able to access @apnews.com today? At first I thought it was my browser, but it isn't working on Firefox either.

This may not be the only area where we need to go to poetry to supplement the incomplete moral vision of the halachic system.

I think this is an area where the only way forward is to look beyond the halachic framework and begin interrogating poetry for values. In biblical poetry, where the trees and the mountains sing praises to God, nature does not appear simply as a resource to be preserved for humanity.

The standard biblical text we point to involves not cutting down the fruit trees around a city we are besieging. Admittedly, that's a bar we have trouble living up to even now, but it's also woefully inadequate (and not just because of the unchallenged assumption that besieging a city is okay).

Thinking of Earth Day in connection with Jewish values, it occurs to me that we desperately need to get beyond the traditional framework of "baal taschit" (do not be wasteful) to the more difficult work of uncovering Jewish perspectives that regard the nonhuman world as a moral subject in itself.