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Every rabbi eventually learns an uncomfortable truth: it is much easier to condemn the sins of others than the sins of our own. The prophets of Israel understood this. Nathan did not rebuke the Philistines; he rebuked King David. Jeremiah did not devote his ministry to the moral failures of Babylon. He called his own people to account. Covenant begins with self-examination. That is why I found myself nodding in agreement as I read Bret Stephens’ recent column in The New York Times warning that Jewish terrorism in the West Bank poses “a direct threat to Israel’s security and statehood, and thus to Zionism itself.”

It is my great joy to introduce Rachel Benaim Abudarham as CAJE’s new Senior Educator and Assistant Director of Adult Learning. A little about her: Rachel is a Sephardic Jew, born and raised in South Florida. For her, this is not a new landscape — it is home. She was trained in study halls across the United States, Israel and Sweden, sharpened in Columbia University classrooms and shaped by a 15-year, award-winning career as a journalist chasing Jewish stories around the globe. A lifelong student, her current doctoral research explores embodied memory in Moroccan and Sephardic Jewish communities— her own community — which is a scholarly way of saying that she cares about how history lives inside us.