What happens when we value the project more than the person? In her Kabbalat Shabbat kavannah on Parashat Noah, Rabbi Becca Weintraub turns to a midrash on the Tower of Babel in which people mourn a fallen brick more than a fallen worker. The story becomes a reminder of a fundamental truth we need again and again. No ideology, ambition, or accomplishment is more important than human life. Shabbat calls us back to that truth and to the sacred worth of every person.

What do we lose when knowledge becomes instant? In her D’var Torah on Parashat Bereshit, BJ Rabbinic Fellow Iliana Brodsky draws a connection between the tree of knowledge and the promise of artificial intelligence. Torah, she suggests, offers a different vision of how human beings are meant to learn. We acquire knowledge through experience, effort, uncertainty, and trying again. The goal is not simply to know more or arrive at the right answer faster, but to remain engaged in the process of being human.

What can a fragile sukkah teach us about what it means to feel held? On the first day of Sukkot, Rabbi Alex Braver contrasts the Torah’s image of the all-encompassing clouds of glory with the vulnerability of the sukkah itself. Precisely because our shelter is never perfect, he suggests, what we create and offer one another becomes all the more precious.