Territories Department
Protective presence for Palestinian farmers, assistance with access to land, and documentation of human rights violations.
Social Justice Department
Promoting social and economic rights, combating poverty and discrimination, and advancing equal opportunities.
Education Department
Designing and delivering educational programs on human rights, religious pluralism, and tolerance.
Interfaith Department
Dialogue and interfaith cooperation, development of joint initiatives, and the promotion of mutual understanding.
About the Organization
Rabbis for Human Rights is the Jewish voice on human rights.
Founded in 1988, it brings together more than 170 members – ordained rabbis and rabbinical students from across the denominations.
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Weekly Torah Portion
The Afflictions and their Remedies
Thoughts for Parashat Tazria-Metzora / Rabbi Rinat Bar Haim
These weekly Torah portions sound like a curse, dealing with bodily afflictions that befall a person and require purification. They read as though they were written in an ancient medical manual, in which the priest—perceived as a healer—is responsible for isolation and for the process of purification/healing. All of this is relatively understandable in its historical time and context.
But why should we read specifically a chapter about afflictions as part of our annual cycle? Why not skip it? Large sections of the Prophets and the Writings were skipped by the sages. When they chose the scrolls to be read on festivals, selected the haftarot, and elevated Psalms as the great book of prayer—they also chose what not to include. So first, I would like to restore to us the power of choice. We do not erase any part of the Torah or the Bible, but we are certainly entitled to choose what to engage with more and what less.
The Danger of Fire
Thoughts for Parashat Shemini / Rabbi Avi Dabush, CEO of Rabbis for Human Rights
Over the past week, I have been counting the Omer and refraining from shaving, as part of the mourning customs observed until Lag BaOmer. This is one of the traditions I have held onto over the years, not because of the well-known Talmudic lesson about the deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students “because they did not treat each other with respect.” (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot, 60b), but because the truth is far more complicated. Rabbi Akiva’s students followed his messianic fervor and were killed in the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Unlike most sages of the time, the charismatic Rabbi Akiva crowned the leader of the revolt as the Messiah and sent his students into what became a suicidal confrontation with the Roman Empire, an event that de-facto led to the beginning of exile and the great uprooting from the Land of Israel.
Course Recalibration
Thoughts for Passover / Rabbi Ishai Ron
The people of Israel gather this week to celebrate the festival of freedom, with Matzah ball, charoset, and other delicacies, while the State of Israel is at war, a war that is no longer about its own freedom (for it is, after all, a “regional power”), but about its desire to continue subjugating another people.
At its founding, the Jewish state sought peace with its neighbors, aspired to integrate into the region, to become a moral exemplar (or at least to strive toward that ideal). It was a Jewish state that wished to embody a Judaism of compassion, of freedom, and of equality, in the spirit of the vision of the prophets of Israel.