IKAR Los Angeles

The ten spies who enter Canaan create 40 years of delay in the Israelites' journey to the Promised Land. What did they do wrong?  And how can we avoid making the same mistake they did as we witness the brutality all around us?

Amid ICE raids and ballistic missiles, here's what I saw from the stage at a multifaith vigil in downtown Los Angeles, what I heard from my Iranian friend who yearns for home, and why I believe our most audacious dreams must be born in the darkest times

This Pride Shabbat, we need to reckon with the current landscape for our trans siblings. We need to understand that trans people are being used as a wedge to divide Americans, and as a test case for increasing authoritarianism. What does our parsha teach us about the dangers of callousness, and what brighter, more beautiful future can we imagine?

When trauma is acknowledged, not denied, not justified, not dismissed through comparison, only then can something new and hopeful be imagined.     Read the sermon here.

After the antisemitic murder of two young beloveds on a DC street, there are four things I know. Parashat Behar-Behukotai 5785

A strange, mysterious half-story told in the Torah hints at a failure of leadership and a failure of law, and calls us to be brave and bold, especially when our dreams seem furthest from reality.

A blessing for strength in spirit and body for a new Pope in a time when spiritual and moral leadership matters more profoundly than ever.

In a world roiled by seemingly unprecedented division and doubt, the longing for spiritual meaning and for a life rooted in faith appears to be growing ever stronger. In this session, speakers share their perspectives and experiences of faith, and the role faith and faith-driven communities can and should play in calming stormy seas. This is an archive of a live event from 5/7/2025 that took place as part of Milken Institute's Global Conference.

To thine own self be true: Sharon Brous has let this advice illuminate her path to becoming a rabbi. She was raised with a strong social, but not religious, Jewish identity. The more she studied and admired the humanity in the sages' writings, the more Brous felt her voice was silenced simply because she is a woman. Today, as an ordained rabbi, Brous's decades of hands-on pastoral care in Los Angeles has cleared “a path to become myself.” Her book, The Amen Effect—and how to get it—is embraced by seekers of every stripe and urges us to seek human connection in an increasingly isolated and divided world.

…Because there is a space between stimulus and response. What we do in that space is our choice. So please: tell me you're scared. I'm scared too. Tell me times are tough. Tell me we're facing a narrowing landscape of possibilities. But please do not tell me there's nothing we can do. There's always a choice to make. Parashat Tazria-Metzora 5785—May 3, 2025

On today's episode of Best Book Ever, Rabbi David Kasher is joined by Madison Margolin to talk about psychedelic experiences in the Torah. Madison is the author of Exile & Ecstasy: Growing Up with Ram Dass and Coming of Age in the Jewish Psychedelic Underground. She's also Co-founder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit and DoubleBlind, a print magazine and digital media startup covering psychedelics and where they intersect with mental health, environmental justice, social equity, and more, Madison also teaches on Judaism and psychedelics, such as with Tzfat's LiveKabbalah or Psychedelics Today, and offers consulting and guidance for those on the Jewish-psychedelic path.

This week was the 250th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. In his story we see so many echoes of our current moment. What lessons can we take with us right now? And how does our parsha's story of Aaron, the high priest, help us step forward to carry out the tasks we are called to do?

Find the text study sheet here. 7th Day of Passover 5785 | Parshat Beshallah

From 4.12.2025 Prepare to embrace the bold vision of Passover (that we are all heading toward freedom, that pharaohs crumble and fall) requires focus. Let's affirm the twin pillars of the Hebrew Bible (chesed/lovingkindness and tzedek/justice) to gird ourselves for the battle ahead!

Ours is not the first generation in which telling this story, reiterating these foundational ideas, is risky. Dangerous, even. And perhaps that is the greatest reason of all to tell this story truthfully.  April 5, 2025 – Pesah 5785

Guy Branum joins Rabbi David Kasher to discuss Ashera and the presence of a goddess in the Torah.

Let us not turn to the garden—or the theater, or the studio—to escape this world, but to enrich the soul, to strengthen our hearts to plant for a better future. Making art, tending gardens, telling stories, especially from within the narrowest constraints—all of these can be sacred acts of defiance.

This is an archive of IKAR's Adult learning class: The Amen Effect with Rabbi Sharon Brous

Lunch & Learn from Shabbat 3.21.2025 - Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum in conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brous.

An archive of Rabbi Sharon Brous's The Amen Effect class from 3.11.2025

An archive of Rabbi Sharon Brous's The Amen Effect Class from 2.25.2025

The rabbis radically reinvent Elijah. From violent zealot to gentle peace builder. The path to the messianic era depends on this transformation.

Using Jews as a wedge to break apart the world order is not new.  We must be honest about what's happening here.

On March 3rd, we welcomed Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the forefront of a burgeoning new peace movement in conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brous.

Rabbi Morris Panitz is joined by Professor Arnold Eisen to discuss his new book. "Seeking the Hiding God: A Personal Theological Essay invites readers to join the author in asking, perhaps for the first time, what they actually believe about ultimate matters of faith and doubt – and rewards fellow- searchers for ultimate meaning with reassurance that the search itself can be a source of personal fulfillment, vibrant community, and great joy."

When your most precious resource faces grave risk, you create a sanctuary to protect and nurture it. You hold close the seeds, so that when the conditions are right, you can replant and rebuild.

Hear from Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger and Khaled Abu Awwad, leaders of Roots/Shorashim/Judur, an Israeli-Palestinian grassroots initiative for understanding, nonviolence, and transformation. They represent a unique network of local Palestinians and Israelis who have come to see each other as partners in the work to make changes to end the conflict. They share with Rabbi Sharon Brous and Melissa Balaban their personal stories of struggle and transformation as well as their vision of mutual national recognition and reconciliation.

In a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, what will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society? Join Rabbi Brous in a series of text studies that explore the Jewish sources that form the core ideas behind her new book, The Amen Effect.

We are lost and disoriented. How can the core values of this week's Torah portion supply us with a compass to navigate the landscape of moral injury?

Yitro reminds us, in the twisted reality of our time: do not quiet your intuition. Defy the new norms. Live from your deepest moral convictions, not your most callous political calculations. And do not eat the tainted grain— no matter how hungry you are. Keep searching for an alternative food source. There is always another food source.

Four postures our tradition warns against, in the face of grave threat: Do not snail. Do not capitulate. Do not meet become the mirror image of your enemy. Do not render yourselves preemptively powerlessness. Instead: do what you know.

We are all struggling in this moment of deep darkness - either riding the constant emotional rollercoaster or already feeling numb. The thing is that both of these will destroy us. Instead, we need to stay connected to our humanity and each other to get us through. That is the only way we will find ourselves back in the light. 

How do American Jews navigate complex conversations about Israel and Palestine across generations? And what does it take to truly listen to each other? Rabbi Sharon Brous sits down with IKAR's CEO Melissa Balaban and her daughter Emma Wergeles to reflect on their recent trip to Israel and the West Bank with Encounter. From different generational perspectives, they share what challenged them, what moved them, and why direct engagement with both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives is essential for for any hope of a lasting and just peace.

This is the moment to remember who we are, to ground ourselves in the story that stands in determined opposition to the story of tyranny. To tell of a God who cares about the vulnerable. To become again a people whose faith compels us to protect the frightened. 

After 15 months of catastrophic loss, unspeakable heartache, and the utter undoing of not one but two peoples—in body and spirit, we stand—at this moment—at an inflection point. May this be the beginning of the end of the suffering. May it be the beginning of the path toward a just peace. Read the sermon here.

Even as the fires burn, let us hold on another, give voice to what we have lost, and turn toward what remains.

How did Joseph, a man hardened by one life experience after the next, soften his heart to forgive his brothers? A remarkable midrash imagines a conversation between Joseph and Benjamin that changes everything. Ten names and all the worlds of meaning, of missing, of memory they contain.

What is Joseph's legacy? And what can we learn from the character with the most costume changes in all of the Torah?

Jacob tried to flee from his estranged brother. Did he fear more the battle, or the potential reconciliation? What happens when victimhood is built into our self-definition? What do we lose when we stay at the table, and what might we gain? What will it take for us to understand that there is no future until we see one another? Vayishlah 5785

There is a teaching in Pirkei Avot that says that the mouth of the well was made during the first Shabbat of creation. We have long accepted it to be Miriam's well, but what if it's the well from this week's parsha - the one Jacob encounters after his dream, and where he meets Rachel for the first time? If it's that well, then maybe we, like Jacob, have to find the well, roll off the stone, and discover what exists underneath. 

Loving your neighbor, who is like you, whose identity you share, is not enough. You must stretch the boundaries of love to wrap into its embrace the stranger, the people in our society who are furthest away from power. To counter the frenzy of rhetoric and the aspirations of policy that demonize these human beings, we need to love them fiercely. We need to love them fully. 

Now we must learn the lesson our ancestor Avram learned: one day our dreams will be realized. Just not today. And not tomorrow. And maybe not for many years. But just as hope doesn't die, dreams don't die. The dream we share for America didn't die because our dream— the dream of a just and merciful multiracial democracy in which all people live in dignity— that dream is the right dream. It is the only future… it's just now clear that it will take much longer to achieve than any of us had hoped.

There's an eerie resonance between the Noah narrative and this week. What does Noah's Flood teach us about navigating chaos and coming once more to land?

After the death of a beloved child in our community to suicide, we reaffirm our commitment to combatting shame with tenderhearted love, to meeting one another in the dark, to never giving up on each other. May Benjamin Ellis's memory be a blessing.