Yesterday I had the privilege of addressing the state Senate and offering some non-sectarian words of prayer before the floor session began. Let me publicly thank my friend and Neveh member, Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward for inviting me to give that invocation. It was also my first time in Salem, and I was grateful to explore our state capitol building a bit.

This past week one of our most influential legal minds vanished from the scene. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's legacy, however, seems poised to endure. His theory of constitutional originalism (we determine what the Constitution means based on the Framers' original intentions in composing a section of the Constitution), and the more circumspect and modest role for the judiciary that results from this vantage point, has been tremendously impactful.

Ever since the Superbowl half time show, the blogosphere and the media have been analyzing Beyoncé's allusion to the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter movement. (For those who didn't catch it, the dancers' black leather and berets referenced the Panther's uniforms.) Unsurprisingly, it's not just Jews who hold multiple opinions!

What is the value of a human being? This sounds like a rhetorical question. After all, if we are created in the image of God, then isn't the value of every person infinite, priceless? Isn't that a basic belief of Judaism and even of American society?