A voice echoes confidently through the large room. Young and old alike listen intently to the man at the front. While it could be easy for a passage out of a 3,000-year-old text to feel distant, this d’var Torah isn’t. There’s a tangible passion behind each of Aryeh Bernstein’s words, especially as he links the themes of today’s Torah segment to their echoes in the modern day.
“With all the suffering and terror in the world,” he said, “I find organizing and learning Torah to be the practices that best help me metabolize that grief, anger and fear into solidarity, creativity and even joy.”
Mr. Bernstein may be an educator at Avodah, a social-justice-oriented fellowship, and a member of the Nichols Park Communion (called a minyon in Hebrew), but his values go far beyond his words. Mr. Bernstein brings the same virtues he teaches into the real world with his grassroots social justice work, community building efforts and religious leadership.
Sophomore Meirav Himelhoch knows Mr. Bernstein from attending his minyon. She admires the accepting nature he brings to the group, where many other organizations are less open.
“He’s welcoming to all people, and they have women in leadership, which is rare,” she said. “I don’t go every week, but he’s always still inviting me to come.”
Mr. Bernstein has been a part of several movements toward social change in line with his view of the Torah’s values. For instance, he worked with the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, a citywide Jewish community organization, and other grassroots groups on the campaign pushing the University of Chicago to offer emergency care locally on the South Side by opening a Level 1 trauma center. He reflected on the mixed emotions he and his colleagues felt when the movement succeeded.
“I was thrilled and relieved,” he said. “We had a lot of eye-rolling that the U. of C. made no acknowledgment of the powerful, Black youth-led coalition that pushed them into it being their interest to open the trauma center. They just announced it out of the blue, as though they had just thought of it … But primarily, we were thrilled and relieved.”
Mr. Bernstein has also made several statements on the Israeli-Hamas conflict. Shortly after the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, an article he wrote condemned Hamas’ actions and the profound scope of pain they caused. He connected with Israelis’ grief, mentioning someone he personally knew who was missing after the attack, but also called for empathy for the Palestinian civilians killed by Israel. He cited the past traumas of war and genocide that both groups share as a reason to unite rather than causing further conflict.
“Right now, our grief and trauma are being directed to war crimes on a colossal scale: mass murder of civilians and children, population transfer, ethnic cleansing. It does not have to be this way,” he wrote. “May our trauma neither freeze nor narrow us, but broaden our empathy and radicalize us to end this Catastrophe of occupation, apartheid, terror and killing.”
Since becoming a parent four years ago, Mr. Bernstein has stepped back somewhat from campaigning to focus on the familial side of community, another meaningful aspect of his Jewish identity. Though he may be organizing less community events, he still believes they’re pivotally important.
“I wouldn’t say exactly that my priorities were changed, just my availability,” he said. “I still find community organizing existentially essential to life as a human and learning Torah existentially essential to life as a Jew.”
Meirav remembered a time when Mr. Bernstein’s sense of compassion and community felt personal when he joined her family for dinner on a Friday night, an important meal in her family.
“I had slept through it until everyone was done,” she said. “He stayed in the kitchen and talked to me while I ate.”
Mr. Bernstein ends his d’var Torah with a call and response, “shabbat shalom,” or “peaceful sabbath.” Every member who files out of the door after knows that a parting message of peace isn’t just a pleasantry for him but a hope for the future.
