When people can’t tell the truth about power, they turn on one another. This past Shabbat honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., guest speaker Eric Ward explored how anti-Blackness and antisemitism operate together to weaken democracy—and what it will take to safeguard against it.

Rabbi Felicia Sol reflected on the challenge of living through a time marked by rage, despair, and moral uncertainty. She asks us to consider how we might deepen our understanding of redemption seeing it not as a reward for suffering, but as a call to renewed moral responsibility.

We live in a moment that mirrors Yosef’s contradiction: a time in which we are both vulnerable and powerful, both threatened and influential, both capable of grace and capable of harm. We know about pits, betrayal, exile, suffering, and survival. We know that antisemitism is alive and on the rise. And we also know what Jewish power and rage can do. We know what it means to be part of systems that determine who lives and who suffers.