In this week's episode, Rabbi Pam Silk begins with a 1984 classroom and a silent Wile E. Coyote cartoon to show how music brings stories — and our spirits — to life. From the Shema on the lips of our youngest learners to Shirat Hayam, the Song of the Sea, at the Sea of Reeds, she explores how song builds bridges between individuals, unites communities, and connects us across generations. This Shabbat Shirah teaching lifts up Miriam’s tambourine, the call-and-response of our tradition, and the hope of a future Shir Chadash, a new song that will usher in a world redeemed from suffering and hate.

In this week's episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler explores the ninth plague’s “thick darkness” and asks a haunting question: Will you be paralyzed by the darkness, or will you be the light? Through Rashi, Midrash Tanchuma, and the teachings of Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter and the Kotzker Rebbe, we explore how spiritual blindness to our neighbor’s pain can leave us stuck, and how truly seeing one another becomes the first step toward growth.

We then turn to the mystical notion of Or HaGanuz, the primordial light of creation, reframing it as the hidden light planted in everyday acts of courage, kindness, and shared humanity. In a moment when the world’s darkness feels inescapable, Rabbi Fixler invites us to become cultivators of light and to ask: Where will we choose to shine it, and for whom is it most needed now?

At a recent professional retreat, Rabbi Pam Silk chose a simple pin that read “Be kind” and found it echoing through this week’s Torah portion, Va-eira. Drawing on the story of Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, and the plagues, she explores how Jewish tradition insists that true freedom demands empathy, restraint, and responsibility toward those over whom we hold power. Citing Rabbi Ben Hollander, Rashi, and the Jerusalem Talmud, Rabbi Silk reflects on God’s charge to confront hardship with patience, respect, and a commitment to act differently than Pharaoh. ​

This week, Rabbi Silk invites us to choose kindness — in struggle and in triumph — and to use that kindness to add goodness and blessing to the world.

This week, guest Rabbi David Segal explores how the term “Judeo‑Christian” has shifted from a specific historical idea to a vague political slogan and why that matters for religious freedom today. Drawing on the Torah story of midwives Shiphrah and Puah and the work of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in Virginia, he shows how Jewish and American traditions alike resist state‑sponsored religion and call us to protect conscience and human dignity for all.​

Rabbi Segal reflects on Christian nationalism, the misuse of “Judeo‑Christian values,” and what it really means to fear God, love our neighbor, and safeguard a pluralistic democracy.

On the first Shabbat of 2026, Rabbi Pam Silk reflects on Jacob’s stark, honest words to his sons in Parshat Vayechi and what they reveal about real leadership and responsibility. Moving from childhood memories of New Year’s cards to the Torah’s challenging images of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, and their brothers, we explore how truth-telling, even when uncomfortable, can shape character and community. Rabbi Silk invites us to balance flowery New Year’s wishes with courageous honesty, and to cultivate the traits of strength, discernment, and integrity that our time demands.

What if Dinah and Joseph were always telling a queer story the Torah never quite finished? Rabbi Josh Fixler revisits Dinah’s disappearance and Joseph’s “coat of many colors” as a princess dress, drawing on classical midrash and modern scholarship to uncover a trans-affirming reading of these siblings. ​

We explore:

✅ Dinah’s trauma, erasure, and the reality that so many victims lose their voice in the record of history.

​✅ Joseph’s gender nonconforming presentation in Bereshit Rabbah and the tradition that links their garment to Tamar’s royal dress. ​

✅ Ancient midrashim that imagine Dinah and Joseph’s genders being swapped in the womb, and what that might mean for trans and nonbinary Jews today. ​

✅ The violence and homelessness transgender people face in our own time, and how Jewish text can move us toward protection, dignity, and joy for all God’s children.

This is a Torah of complexity, compassion, and courage — an invitation to see the divine spark shining brightest when each person can live as their truest self.

On this Mother’s Day Shabbat, Rabbi Pam Silk reflects on the many faces of motherhood: joy and exhaustion, gratitude and grief, presence and absence. Drawing on Torah, contemporary stories, and the language of Jewish blessing, she honors mothers, grandmothers, caregivers, and all who “mother” in less conventional ways, while making space for those who find this day complicated or painful. This heartfelt sermon invites listeners to name the women who shaped them and to carry their love forward with tenderness and intention.

In this searing Shabbat sermon, Rabbi Pam Silk departs from her planned d’var Torah on the Jubilee year to confront the anguish unleashed by the murders of two young Jews, Sarah Milgram and Yaron Lishinsky, in Washington, DC. She names their killings as an act of terrorism fueled by anti-semitism, exposes how contemporary anti-zionism often masks and amplifies Jew-hatred, and reflects on the chilling reality of Jews being targeted simply for learning, worshiping, and gathering in Jewish spaces. Even as she refuses to minimize the pain, Rabbi Silk turns to the Torah’s call to Shabbat as a sacred pause — a “container, a frame around the chaos, a breath between the screams” — that can steady frightened souls and replenish the courage to live openly, proudly, enthusiastically Jewish in a world where hatred has grown louder and more acceptable.