ALEPH voices featured in Sh’ma

The latest issue of Sh’ma focuses on תֹכֵחָה / Tochecha: Rebuke, and features Jewish Renewal voices from ALEPH Network communities on the east and west coasts of the United States.

Jhos Singer of ALEPH Network community Chochmat Ha-Lev examines what tochecha teaches us about living Jewishly. Tochecha asks us to listen so that we may “fully absorb what we hear and then get busy clearing away the muck.” The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, teaches: “If you see another person doing something ugly, meditate on the presence of that same ugliness in yourself.”

Rabbi David Ingber of ALEPH Network community Romemu writes about rebuking Mordechai Gafni, the charismatic teacher who has been accused of sexual misconduct—among other offenses—repeatedly. But how do we rebuke someone who is impervious to tochecha? Ingber “leaned on the Talmud’s teaching that we should rebuke someone, even 100 times…”