Torah in memory of Hersh Goldberg-Polin z"l, Ori Danino z"l, Carmel Gat z"l, Alexander Lubanov z"l, Almog Sarsui z"l, and Eden Yerushalmi z"l. - #Day684 #Broadcast1371 #Reeh #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Torah in memory of Hersh Goldberg-Polin z"l, Ori Danino z"l, Carmel Gat z"l, Alexander Lubanov z"l, Almog Sarsui z"l, and Eden Yerushalmi z"l. - #Day684 #Broadcast1371 #Reeh #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Reeh: False Prophets - #Day683 #Broadcast1370 #Reeh #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Engraved for Freedom (Ekev)

Engraved for Freedom (Ekev)

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Today is day 678 since October 7. We have been counting - one day at a time - since that horrific morning. We have been responding, tirelessly, to the threats that have not relented. Faithfulness to that daily discipline matters: faithful to memory, faithful to our people, and faithful to who we are on the inside.

Dr. Edith Eger, psychologist, author, and Auschwitz survivor, once said that she wakes up each morning and asks herself: “Do you want to be soft and warm or cold and stiff?” It isn’t easy—how could it be?—but it is our calling. Even when reactivity feels warranted, tradition invites us to keep our inner core supple and resilient. That inner warmth isn’t weakness; it’s part of the treasured legacy that empowers us to defend our people without surrendering our souls.

My dear mentor and friend, Yossi Klein Halevi, wrote recently about what he termed “the end of the post-Holocaust era,” the shattering realization that what we thought was unimaginable could again be spoken aloud and acted upon (Times of Israel, October 7, 2024). We see it in the public square, even in cultural spaces that ought to celebrate human courage—stories of family rescue and moral clarity sometimes meet resistance. Too often, only a passionate, principled response nudges the world back toward decency. It’s complicated. And it’s why our inner work must be as strong as our outer work.

Just as the entire book of Deuteronomy is not bare history but rather a heart telling its story, Ekev is Moshe remembering. He worries about us (for good reason), warns us not to harden into arrogance, and pleads that we “circumcise the foreskin of our heart” (Deut. 10:16) - to remain tender, responsive, human.

Amid his memories, one quiet verse shimmers: “I turned and came down from the mountain… and I placed the tablets in the ark that I had made; there they are, as Adonai commanded me” (Deut. 10:5). Our sages teach that the whole tablets and the shattered ones both rested in the Ark (Menachot 99a). Both. Our wholeness and our brokenness travel together at the center of the sacred.

Another teaching (Shemot Rabbah 41:7) lingers on the word “charut  - engraved” on the tablets and reads it as “cherut - freedom.” When Torah becomes truly ours, it is engraved not only on stone but on the human heart. After the Temples fell, the Holy of Holies moved inward; the Ark’s address is now our own interior life (Zohar). Which means the tablets are still here - right here - summoning us to live the covenant in two directions at once: between us and God, and between one human being and another.

Ekev also means “heel,” which Rashi sees as a cue to remind us to never trample what we consider lighter mitzvot under our heels. In a season of great alarms, Ekev insists that freedom is engraved in the small daily choices: how we speak, whom we notice, what we refuse to excuse, when we soften rather than harden. 

If the tablets are still in the heart, then so is the reminder of what it means to be human. The rabbis said long ago: “In a place where there are no human beings, strive to be human. (Pirkei Avot 2:5)” Today, when interpersonal cruelty and idolatry (of power, tribe, and self) abound, we are called to activate what is already engraved within us until everyone has what they need.

All of this remains true. 

All of this defines the extent of our freedom.

Olam Chesed Yibaneh at the Parliament of the World’s Religions | August 14, 2023

An Open Letter to the Leadership of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

An Open Letter to the Leadership of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Your decision to cancel the screening of a documentary on the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, citing “copyright concerns” because the filmmakers did not obtain permission from the terrorists themselves whose GoPro footage documented the massacres, is a moral collapse.

Let’s be perfectly clear: Hamas filmed its own war crimes. These were not staged “productions” deserving of artistic royalties. They were gleeful, self-incriminating records of the slaughter of innocent human beings — Israeli men, women, children, elderly, even infants — butchered, burned, abducted. That footage is not “property” in the moral sense; it is evidence. Evidence of war crimes was verified by Human Rights Watch on October 18, 2023 (link here: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/18/israel/palestine-videos-hamas-led-attacks-verified).

By framing your decision as a matter of intellectual property law, you have crossed from neutrality into complicity. You have effectively placed the “ownership rights” of murderers above the world’s right — the world’s obligation — to bear witness to truth.

You are the Toronto International Film Festival. You are meant to be a stage for the human story, especially when it is searing, urgent, and inconvenient. What is film for, if not to confront reality and demand moral reckoning? What have you become if the killers’ claims to “copyright” can silence the victims’ testimonies?

October 7 survivors have already shared their experiences through the USC Shoah Foundation’s October 7 Testimonies (https://sfi.usc.edu/october7testimonies). These are not simply “stories” — they are cries for justice, preserved so no one can say “we didn’t know.” Yet your decision tells survivors their pain is less important than the imagined “rights” of those who tried to erase them.

TIFF, the world is watching. This is not about copyright. This is about courage. Do you stand for art as a force for truth and human dignity — or for bureaucracy as a shield for cowardice?

You have a chance to reverse this decision. You have a chance to be remembered for defending the moral conscience of art, not for bowing to the perpetrators of mass slaughter.

Restore the screening. Stand with survivors. Show the truth.

Ekev: What to do with Anger - #Day677 #Broadcast1366 #Ekev #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Ekev: The Goal is Holiness #Day676 #Broadcast1365 #Ekev #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Ekev: For When You Have Enough - hashtag#Day675 hashtag#Broadcast1364 hashtag#Ekev hashtag#BringThemHomeNow hashtag#UntilTheLastHostage

Yedid Nefesh (archive video: February 2017)

A Double Measure of Comfort (Shabbat Nachamu)

A Double Measure of Comfort

(Shabbat Nachamu)

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Shabbat Nachamu is the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av, the day we mourn collective loss. It’s the Shabbat where we begin to breathe again, even if that breath still catches in the throat. It’s the Shabbat of Comfort. But not just comfort. Double comfort. "Nachamu, nachamu ami—Comfort, comfort My people. (Is. 40:10)”

Why twice?

When a person’s name is called twice in succession in the Torah—Abraham, Abraham (Gen. 22:11)… Moses, Moses (ex. 3:4)—it’s never just about summoning. It’s about connection, intimacy, urgency, reassurance. And here, too, the prophet Isaiah doesn’t say “comfort” once. He says it twice. Perhaps once is not enough. Maybe we need comfort for the past—and comfort for the present.

We are still counting the days since October 7th. Day 672. We are still seeking clarity in chaos, still yearning for stability in an unstable world. We have been asked to bear so much, to hold so much. And somehow, we do.

And so, on this Shabbat, we turn to the Torah portion, Va’etchanan. Moses begs to enter the Land and is denied. He is disappointed. He is human. And yet, he doesn’t fall apart. Instead, he blesses the people. He strengthens Joshua. He prioritizes continuity over ego. He teaches us that even with a broken heart, we can lead forward. We must.

And then, after the Torah reading this Shabbat, we will hear in the Haftarah Isaiah speaking comfort to a people devastated, disoriented, trying to remember who they are. And it says—you’ve already paid double for your suffering (Is. 40:2). You’ve been through enough. It is time for comfort.

Friends, maybe that's why Nachamu is doubled. One for the sorrow that has already come. And one for the sorrow we still carry as we move forward. One for those who have been taken. And one for those who remain.

We are called this week to pause. That’s not easy. To be still in a world of such noise. To breathe amid trauma. But maybe that’s the commandment of this Shabbat: Let the comfort in.

And then… let it move outward.

I think of all the people who will read this Haftarah tomorrow. I think of the whole aching, beautiful, fractured world, calling out in and for comfort. Nachamu. Nachamu.

Nachamu. Comfort.
Nachamu. Again.

Because once just isn’t enough.

Nachamu, Nachamu - #Day672 #Broadcast1363#VaEtchanan #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

VaEtchanan-Nachamu: Exploring Comfort - #Day671 #Broadcast1362 #VaEtchanan #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

VaEtchanan: Seeing Beyond the Self - #Day670 #Broadcast1361 #VaEtchanan #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

VaEtchanan: Love and Consequences -- #Day669 #Broadcast1360 #VaEtchanan #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

VaEtchanan: The Day After Tisha B'Av - #Day668 #Broadcast1359 #VaEtchanan #BringThemHomeNow #UntilTheLastHostage

Shabbat Chazon: A Different Vision - #Day665 #Broadcast1358 #Devarim #BringThemHomeNow