Rabbi Lauren Tuchman

Category: Teachings

  • On COVID-19 and New Accessible Opportunities For Us All

    On COVID-19 and New Accessible Opportunities For Us All

    New Accessible Jewish Paradigm shifts in the Wake of COVID-19 March 20, 2020   This week has been a challenging and uncertain one for our world. We know we’re in this for the long haul, that things are going to get worse before they get better. Many of us feel…

  • Terumah 5780

    Parashat Terumah begins a series of parshiyot or Torah portions chiefly focused on the construction of the Mishkan or portable sanctuary for The Divine which the Jewish people carried with us in the desert. In the second verse of our parsha, we learn that all of the children of Israel…

  • Bo 5780

    This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Bo, contains within it some of the most famous incidents in the Torah. The final plagues of locusts, darkness and the death of the firstborn are mentioned, as well as the introduction of the Passover offering and the observance of Passover as an eternally relevant…

  • Reflection on Isaiah 66

    This reflection originally appeared as part of the 929 Project, the study of a chapter of the Jewish Bible or Tanakh each day. Our chapter, the final in the Book of Isaiah, presents us with a variety of contrasting and paradoxical motifs. A beautiful, redemptive conjuring of Yerushalayim is juxtaposed…

  • Rabbi Lauren Tuchman organizing for liberation remarks Join for Justice October 3 2019

    4 Tishrei, 5780/October 3, 2019 The following remarks were presented as part of a public event sponsored by Join for Justice at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Massachusetts on October 3, 2019. The event featured Rabbis Lauren Tuchman and Becky Silverstein.   Organizing for Liberation with Rabbis Lauren Tuchman and…

  • Noach 5780

    November 1, 2019   In the opening verse of our parsha this week, we learn that Noach was a righteous man in his generation. Our sages have made much of this descriptor. One of the greatest gifts our Torah gives us in my understanding is that we get a glimpse…

  • DCM remarks December 7 2019

    December 7, 2019 The following remarks were presented as part of a lunch and learn at DC Minyan in Washington, D.C.   Shabbat shalom! Before I begin, I’d like to first thank the SC and everyone who has brought me to be with you all today. It is truly an…

  • Chayei Sarah Torah 2020

    What To Do With Unbearable Suffering Rabbi Lauren Tuchman Torah 2020 Parashat Chayei Sarah 5780 November 14, 2019   Throughout the centuries, our commentators have puzzled over the opening of this week’s parsha. Why, they ask, is our parsha called Chayei Sarah—the life of Sarah—when it opens by recording Sarah’s…

  • Bereshit 5780

    October 25, 2019   Traditionally, when a community or individual completes a tractate of Talmud or Mishnah, which are the foundational sources of Jewish oral law, a formula is recited in which the learners promise to return again and again to their learning. To internalize Torah deeply, our tradition teaches,…

  • 929 Rabbi Lauren Tuchman Isaiah 46 reflection

    December 26, 2019 This reflection originally appeared as part of the 929 Project, the study of a chapter of the Jewish Bible or Tanakh each day.   Isaiah’s prophecies regarding the fall of the Babylonian Gods are presented in stark contrast to the constancy, unfaltering G-d of Israel. Unlike the…