Or Shalom’s News Minyan has for many years been a way to use our tradition's practice of wrestling with text to examine our own time, our own texts, and our own lives. We seek to focus Judaism's wisdom, compassion, and life-affirmation on current events and the big
questions we face today.

The News Minyan is not a forum for political debate. It is a spiritual practice in which we explore and wrestle with what it is to be alive now. In this noisy, cluttered world, we seek a space where silence and contemplation are possible. To that end, we have evolved a form that includes silence, speech, listening, song, prayer, and poetry. This form helps us to face subjects we might want to ignore, or that might ignite fierce dispute, in a way that values difference and engenders depth and new thinking.

We will read together a “Text of Our Time” on the current situation in Israel-Palestine, and Rabbi Faryn will bring the Jewish tradition of interpreting texts using the four lenses of P’Shat (plain sense, direct reading), Remez (allegorical reading), Drash (comparative reading), and Sod (hidden, esoteric reading).

Click here to read this week's text "Team Biden Needs a Reset on Israel" from the New York Times.