Temple Hillel B'nai Torah

Reflections & Messages

• These two reflections speak to one another across time. In 2024, Rabbi Aliza wrote about the longstanding Jewish tension between the particular and the universal. In 2026, she returns to the challenge of living across difference, asking how we might learn to “translate” for one another. We invite you to read them together.

  “We Need a Translator” — Listening Across Differences

  Rabbi Aliza Schwartz • August 2026

  Rabbi Aliza reflects on the different meanings, connotations, and emotional reactions that charged words and symbols can carry, and on the need to learn how to “translate” for one another across difference. This reflection frames HBT’s August 27 Listening Across Differences conversation and future community conversations after the High Holy Days.

  The Particular and the Universal

  Rabbi Aliza Schwartz • October 2024

  “When and how do we care for, be with, mourn for, pray for our Jewish family in particular, and when and how do we care for, be with, mourn for, pray for our human family? It is a very old question in a new context.”
• Leaning Into Song: Music and Prayer at HBT
  Rabbi Aliza Schwartz • January 2026
• Communal Conversation: NYC’s Mayoral Election and Its Dynamics for the Jewish Community
  Rabbi Aliza Schwartz • August 28, 2025
• Why Antisemitism Is at the Center of Attacks on Democracy
  June 30, 2025
• Antisemitism — A Big Email
  Rabbi Aliza Schwartz • April 2025

Kol HaRav gathers teachings, sermons, and reflections from Rabbi Aliza, offered throughout the year and across the High Holy Days. The videos below are presented in chronological order, newest first, allowing you to follow the unfolding of learning, memory, and moral reflection over time.

Dates are shown using both the Jewish (Hebrew) calendar and the Gregorian calendar, reflecting how sacred time and civic time meet in our communal life.