My daughter doesn't remember Rabbi Heschel or Dr. King, but she knows the story of liberation that we tell every year, And some day she will tell the story of being a small part of the second inauguration of President Obama to her children.

As we continue our journey through the book of Exodus, reading about the triumphs and travails of the Israelites in their march to freedom, let us also pause to reflect on the legacies of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr., two great modern advocates of compassion and justice.

Why do Republicans of this fundamentalist strand feel they have a monopoly on God? Isn't it convenient that God always comes down so definitively on the side of their beliefs?

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." This pearl of wisdom from Martin Buber could apply to taking a visual tri...

We need to nurture our ability to hear as well as to speak, to learn as well as to teach, and to do our best to enhance the quality of life for all people. This requires a radical transformation in our understanding of the meaning of religious truth.

The Israelites may have left Egypt, but in many ways, we still experience Egypt. Humans still treat people who are different as "other." Until that stops, we are all still enslaved to prejudice and its consequences.

We are created in the image of God, but we are not God. Humanity's unparalleled wisdom and power needs to be tempered by humility.

But what's fascinating is that two of elements -- curiosity and awe -- are two of the driving forces behind both science and Judaism. They are what lead us to see their inherent beauty.

As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, "Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible."

There is much hand-wringing over Jewish continuity, but less attention paid to Jewish literacy. One factor that is especially neglected -- to our peril -- is the centrality of Hebrew language knowledge.

One of my favorite Passover rituals is the reading in synagogue of the biblical book the Song of Songs. Its images evoke spring and are perfect for this season of rebirth.

When you're asking a question with an expected answer, and that answer is the opposite of what you hope it will be, there's no constructive dialogue. It simply comes off as a judgmental attack.

The sounds of Muslims and Christians in Tahrir Square praying and protesting echoes a transformational moment when Jewish rabbis risked their lives to protect Black Americans.

Like Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King, the Egyptian protesters moved beyond parochial religious identities to come together to call for a peace in a place where it has been long denied.

If God had wanted to establish a religion at Sinai, there would have been no need for a kingdom or nation. The Torah aims at far more than collective belief or individual enlightenment.

And Yom Kippur is rolling around again. Let us let God's leopard loose on Yom Kippur. May we in Isaiah's name let "subversive" prayer leap from the letters in the prayerbook.

Heeding Heschel's call, on Tuesday, August 31, over forty students, staff, and faculty from Hebrew Union College - New York walked with signs of support, yarmakules, prayer shawls, and ceremonial rams horns from our campus on West Fourth Street to the Park51 community center.

Kabbalah is largely about balance: love and boundary, mercy and judgment, upper and lower, symbolic and literal, physical and spiritual. Balance, and how things go out of balance.