This is Life as a Sacred Text, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. We’re generally working our way through Leviticus these days. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here.🌱

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a movement towards accountability for those with tremendous power—demanding that those who cause harm actually take responsibility for their actions.

There’s a lot that’s come with that, including, well, some actual accountability for those with power. But there’s also been a lot of confusion about how to go about demanding and achieving accountability, and, what asking for accountability might look like in our more relational spaces. And there has been a ton of anxiety and defensiveness that comes with any suggestion that a person might have some work to do.

ANYWAY. All this as an a way of saying:

Today we’ll be talking about rebuke!

What my tradition suggests and why about how to do it, and what that might mean for us today.

So this time we’re going to do things a little bit backwards, sort of.

We’re going to read the Torah, then Maimonides, and then spend some time in the Talmud on which Maimonides based his work here, so that you can see more clearly what he did and how. It’s like getting to pry open some piece of tech to see what-all is in there, sorta. So this is both Torah content and methodology.

Big picture, we’re talking here a lot about “calling in,” the more relational work, as opposed to “calling out,” which happens across lines of difference or power, or beyond established relationships.