Rabbi Sandra Lawson: 'We Must Remember That We're All Family'

It’s a scary time. Many of us are feeling despaired. Many of us are feeling hopeless. And we could all use a boost. So, we asked our favorite rabbis to send us voice notes of hope, reminders that as bad as things feel now, we must not give up. Here’s Rabbi Sandra Lawson, a rabbi, author, speaker, musician, and army veteran living in North Carolina.

“In thinking about how we maintain hope with so much going on in the world. I want to draw our attention to a lengthy conversation in the Talmud. In the Talmud, the Rabbis ask why is the creation story in Bereshit (Genesis) so clear that we are all descended from one ancestor and the answer the Talmud gives is so that no one person can say that my lineage is better than your lineage or I am better than you (Sanhedrin 37a)

Unfortunately, we live in a society where many put themselves above others. So what I want you to remember is that when we go about our day and we encounter people who are different than us. We encounter people with different races, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, different political persuasions, different sexual orientations, and so on…We must remember that we’re all family because we are descended from one being which makes us family, it makes us siblings, it makes us brothers and sisters and that this idea of equality is fundamental to the creation of the world and creation of all of us.“