Ted Talk: It is Time to Reclaim Religion

Talk from TEDWomen 2016 is an outgrowth of a presentation previewed by Sharon Brous at #HartmanSummer 2016 in Jerusalem in the first of our series of HART Talks. 

I was a new mother and a young rabbi in the spring of 2004, and the world was in shambles. Maybe you remember. Every day, we heard devastating reports from the war in Iraq. There were waves of terror rolling across the globe. It seemed like humanity was spinning out of control.

I remember the night that I read about the series of coordinated bombings in the subway system in Madrid, and I got up and I walked over to the crib where my six-month-old baby girl lay sleeping sweetly, and I heard the rhythm of her breath, and I felt this sense of urgency coursing through my body.

We were living through a time of tectonic shifts in ideologies, in politics, in religion, in populations. Everything felt so precarious. And I remember thinking, “My God, what kind of world did we bring this child into? And what was I as a mother and a religious leader willing to do about it?

full transcript of this ted talk