Video Installation screen 2: Rabbi Sharon Brous

Text Panel

Hi. I’m Rabbi Sharon Brous from a community called Ikar in Los Angeles.
Years ago I was nearing the end of my rabbinical studies, having spent many years immersed in the study of our tradition, studying Torah and Talmud 14 hours a day, when terrible floods devastated the East African country of Mozambique, and I saw an image on the front page of the paper, of mothers holding their babies in their arms who had climbed to the top of 20-foot trees, holding on for dear life, waiting for rescue helicopters that would never come for them.
And I became paralyzed with the realization that all of my Jewish observance, my Jewish learning, meant nothing, if it wasn’t working to ease the suffering of human beings all around the world.
So I decided to drop out of rabbinical school, until a mentor of mine told me that the world needs rabbis who give a damn about the women and the babies of Mozambique, and I knew that he was right. So I went back to seminary, this time determined to understand what it means to be a Jew and a human being in a world on fire, how to build communities that are oases of love and justice.
Today I fully believe that it is our particular Jewish story, our tradition, our text, our rituals, that fuel our audacious universalist vision of a world redeemed.