"I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
-Harriet Tubman

Mental slavery is an inability to view events, or one's self, differently from commonly held beliefs. Mental slavery cripples it's victim, can make them despairing, close-minded, and destructive to themselves and their community.

The friend who insults another is a mental slave. The family member who stereotypes or dislikes another race is a mental slave. The student who believes thing cannot change for the better is a mental slave. They are under the influence of ideas that are not really theirs, biases they are not fully aware of, that cause them to react in ways that have nothing to do with real goals or desires.

The Passover Haggadah usually doesn’t give much emphasis to Moses, but his story is a telling one.

This article originally appeared at michaelrabkin.com. The following is a talk I delivered at Congregation Shearith Israel on Saturday morning in honor of the "Emory Shabbat." The weekly torah portion is Ki Tisa.

I want to thank Rabbi Norry and Rabbi Zelony for allowing me to share the bimah this morning. I especially want to thank Barry Etra, who has been utterly persistent and authentically driven to foster the partnership between Hillel at Emory and this congregation. The significant number of Emory faculty, alumni and students who are a part of this congregation makes the relationship inextricable, but like any relationship it takes nurturing. We have done various joint programs together like the Latke-Hamentashen debate at Emory and a Shabbat dinner at the synagogue. The primary goal that we share is to create a natural bridge for Emory students to cross into the Atlanta Jewish community after graduation. Each year, about 500 of the 2,000 Jewish students at Emory graduate. We know that many stay in Atlanta, but after living in the Emory bubble for four years, it’s hard to automatically feel at home here. This relationship between Hillel and Shearith Israel is one way to build that bridge.

The post originally appeared on the Jewish Food Alliance blog. Mimi Hall is the director of building operations at the Marcus Hillel Center at Emory.

In December, I attended the Hazon Food Conference East at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT with the help of the Shearith Israel Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

On Thursday December 9,  I arrived and missed the beginning of Vermicomposting and instead went to hear about “Growing Your CSA.”  This session opened my eyes further to potential membership communities, including the idea of targeting pre-schools in membership drives.  New mothers are really into nutrition...who better to join a group that supports local farms and delivers organic produce weekly to their neighborhood?  These CSAs have appeal not only to indie-types who want to eliminate steps between their consumption and the production of their food, but also new families yearning to feed themselves with delicious and nutritious produce. At this session I also met Jennifer from Houston who runs a CSA through her Jewish Community Center.  She, Naomi Rabkin and I were the extent of the Southern contingent at the conference.  Small and mighty, we started a conversation about the challenges that face our Southern communities - very different than those in the NE and California - one that I hope to continue now that we are back in our respective cities.

As the Emory campus begins to empty out for the American holiday of Thanksgiving, we might ask: What's Jewish about it this holiday? Thankfully, we have Rabbi Michael Broyde, professor of law at Emory Law and the academic director of the Law and Religion Program at Emory University, to help us reflect on this question.

For more inspiration about how to give your Thanksgiving dinner table a Jewish edge, consider incorporating some Jewish side dish ideas from this JTA article.

Wishing you and your family a very happy and meaningful Thanksgiving holiday!

So what would happen if you got an email one day with your personal, private reflections that you wrote down a year ago. I would probably not really remember ever writing it, and I expect I would be a bit surprised at what I was thinking and feeling a mere 365 days ago. I might also discover something real - a bit of truth about who I am...what's fleeting, what sticks.

The idea sounds kind of cool, so I signed up for this new website, which does exactly this.