Ikar Los Angeles

Join Rabbi Sharon Brous in conversation with Rep. Katie Porter, who represents the 47th Congressional District in Orange County, California

There’s so much keeping us up at night. This war is breaking us. But even in the darkness, we can choose to embrace life. Joy. Love. And hope for a better future. What gets you up in the morning?

A medieval text cries out to us from the depths of Jacob’s anguished heart to our own: beware lest we see a whole world full of bloodthirsty predators. Adding grief to grief will never heal the broken heart. We don’t all need to love each other. But we absolutely must understand one another.

A seemingly unnecessary detail in the text hints at a multigenerational reminder: the generational transmission of hope is the most audacious and profound expression of spiritual resistance in a cruel and broken world. So lift your gaze to a future beyond the devastation of today. Imagine a different end to the story.

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/531708?lang=bi

A little jar with a remarkable journey tells a story desperately needed in this time of war. Perpetual violence is not inevitable. Never abandon the conviction that peace is our ultimate hope, and it can be found.

Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/528461?lang=bi

In the wake of the devastating attacks on southern Israel on October 7th, which resulted in so many taken hostage, murdered, and even more displaced, our hearts go out to all those affected. Kibbutz Kfar Azza, among the hardest hit, saw its members' lives entirely shattered. To honor the victims and support the survivors in their efforts to rebuild, we invite you to join a community memorial and fundraiser in a Zoom webinar with survivors from Kibbutz Kfar Azza in a conversation moderated by Rabbi Sharon Brous.

From Rabbi Panitz's class on 11.21.2023

When women’s voices are ignored, diminished and marginalized, everyone loses. Jacob loved Rachel, but he failed to take seriously her anguished voice. Thousands of years later, Israeli spotters—women in intelligence—were ignored… at the peril of the nation. Why we must center women’s voices in the quest for peace, and in the work for a better, safer world.

Rabbi David Kasher's Weekly Parsha Study. Source sheet: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/525551?lang=bi

Trauma awakens our ancestor Yitzhak to the possibility of a third way. Third way people fight to see humanity, even when our own humanity has been denied, and insist on complexity in a world of simplistic certainties, and fluidity in a time of binaries. Perhaps we, too, can find one another in that spacious place, the place where hope is born.