Making Room for God

Dec 21, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayiggash

Jacob and Joseph, father and son, had been separated for 22 years. At first the exclamation of his sons that Joseph was not only alive but ruled over all of Egypt was met with stony silence. Jacob did not dare let their words shatter the emotional equilibrium he had forged out of his suffering. It was only upon seeing the vehicles of Egyptian design sent by Joseph that Jacob softened his resistance. His spirit sprang back to life and he insisted on leaving for Egypt immediately to behold once again his long lost son.

Uniting the Jewish People

Dec 20, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayeshev

This week I will leave for Israel to attend the World Zionist Congress along with 37 other delegates from MERCAZ, the official Zionist party of the Conservative Movement in the United States. Despite the overblown rhetoric that will be heard in Jerusalem, no one should imagine that this Congress is a matter of any consequence. Zionism is alive and well, but the World Zionist Organization died a long time ago. In Jewish life we simply can’t muster the political will to dismantle organizational structures designed for a specific purpose after they have been crowned with success.

A Wounded Leader

Dec 13, 1997 By Allan Kensky | Commentary | Vayishlah

For the past nine years, one of my assignments in the Rabbinical School has been to lead a year long, twice-weekly seminar in professional and spiritual development for our first year students. Our overarching theme for the year is the life-cycle of the Jew. We discuss and examine the major life-cycle rituals. We explore some of the larger societal issues of each turning point in the life-cycle with an eye towards their impact on the individual and their challenge to the contemporary rabbi. Students study rabbinic sources and halakhic texts on the life-cycle, gradually integrating these texts into their emerging rabbinic personality.

The Importance of Educating Our Children

Dec 6, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei

When Abraham instructed his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac back in the old country, and only there, he stipulated twice that Isaac himself was never to return. He was to stay in Canaan, but not to marry any of its native women. Yet a generation later, we find caution thrown to the winds. Jacob retraces his grandfather’s steps to Paddan-aram, from where he hailed.

Mourning a Sister

Nov 29, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Toledot

The Shiva is over. I have reentered the world emotionally drained and self-absorbed. My sister, my only sibling, was also my friend. We shared so much of our adult lives. My wife and I were married in her home. Her first husband, an obstetrician for whom the practice of medicine was his calling, delivered our three children. Their spacious and relaxed home in Vineland, New Jersey provided us a refuge full of love, companionship and good conversation. We traveled together, mourned together and always celebrated the Passover sedarim together.

Faith in Israel’s Destiny

Nov 22, 1997 By Morton M. Leifman z”l | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah

This week’s Torah portion, Haye Sarah, provides us with yet another ancient episode that eventually contributed to the molding of the mythic consciousness of our people in a profound way. It begins with the death of Sarah and continues on with a lengthy description of the legal and business arrangements necessary for Abraham’s acquisition of land for Sarah’s burial. Abraham’s status in the land of Canaan is that of ger v’toshav, a resident alien, and though a man of great substance, even a person of renown, one honored in the community, his legal status required that he obtain special permission both from the owner of the land and from the community as a whole to buy and to own property. Members of the native clans were reluctant to confer full rights even to resident aliens — especially the right to land ownership which conceivably might deplete the holdings of the progeny of those currently blessed with political control.

Abraham’s Landsmann

Nov 7, 1997 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

I was honored when Chancellor Schorsch asked me to fill in for him and write a d’var torah on Parashat Lech Lecha, because for this one week each year he and I are Landsmann. The word, in German or Yiddish, denotes compatriots, fellow countrymen. My own family ancestry traces back to Byelorussia, my grandparents hailing from Minsk and Pinsk. The Chancellor comes, as his readers surely know, from Germany. But each of us share a patrimony in this week’s Torah reading, for Parashat Lech Lecha was the bar mitzvah portion each of us chanted in our respective congregations all those many years ago.

Giving Women a Voice

Nov 7, 1997 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Vayera

I did not celebrate my bat mitzvah on parashat Vayera; in fact, I never celebrated it at all. My birthday on 19 Heshvan gives me, as a legitimate birthright, permission to indulge in constant grappling with this incredibly rich and complex text. Yet I have never voiced that connection with a proper celebration of my Jewish coming of age.

Morality and the Mind

Oct 31, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah

But ten generations after Adam and Eve, we find God in despair over the unrelieved waywardness of humanity. Human depravity threatens to turn created order into primordial chaos. The Mishna (in Sanhedrin 10:3) declares the behavior of the generation of the flood to have been so reprehensible that it will be excluded for eternity from the world-to-come. Yet the Torah denies us any illustrative details, leaving a gap that begs for reader participation.

The Day Begins with Night

Oct 25, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit

The Mishna, Judaism’s first legal compendium after the Bible, opens with a treatment of the proper times to recite the Shema in the evening and in the morning. The first line reads: “From when to when do we [liturgically] read the Shema in the evening.” The ensuing discussion in the Gemara (Mishna + Gemara = Talmud) asks why the Mishna doesn’t first take up the morning Shema. Since the day starts in the morning, wouldn’t this be the logical place to start? The answer of the Gemara is brief and far-reaching. The Mishna follows the order of creation. Six times the opening chapter of the Torah repeats the poetic refrain, “And there was evening and there was morning,” to signal the completion of a divine day’s work. The Torah seems to be going out of its way to establish the fact that the day does not begin with the crack of dawn, but rather with the setting of the sun (or halakhicly, with the appearance of three stars).

The Process of Repentance

Oct 11, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yom Kippur

A Palestinian preacher, Rabbi Alexandri, was wont to speak in the language of an evangelist: “Who desires life?” he would declaim, “Who desires life?” And quickly the crowds gathered, demanding, “Give us life!” At last, Rabbi Alexandri would begin by quoting two verses from Psalm 34: “Who is the person who is eager for life, who desires years of good fortune? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking guile (34:13-14).”

Pluralism in Israel

Oct 2, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah

I have been asked often of late why I am spending so much time on the promotion of religious pluralism in Israel. Isn’t it a diversion from the continuity crisis in America, which is, after all, my main concern? The fact is that the two are linked. Israel is a large component of American Jewish identity. Were Israel to become irrelevant or off-putting for American Jews, our ability to withstand the forces of assimilation would be gravely impaired. As an unconditional Zionist, I would support Israel even if it became a benighted shtetl. But such a constricted and coercive state would hold little meaning for our grandchildren.

Torah and Livelihood

Sep 20, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Among the cascade of curses that pour forth in Parashat Ki Tavo, one in particular grabs my attention this year, not because of the vividness of its brutality (others surpass it), but because of its later application in a talmudic dispute. Our reading of a text is often a function of what we have on our mind. I refer to a fairly generic articulation of the fate of national subjugation: “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, you shall have to serve – in hunger and thirst, naked and lacking everything – the enemies whom the Lord will let loose against you… (Deuteronomy 28:47–48). The phrase “ve–avadeta et oyvekha – you shall have to serve your enemies” is the link to a discussion in the Talmud about the issue of just how much of our lives are we expected to devote to the study of Torah.

The Torah’s Lesson for Effective Leadership

Jul 12, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Hukkat

Death hangs heavy over this week’s parasha. We are nearing the end of Israel’s forty–year trek into the wilderness. In quick succession, Miriam dies without forewarning or fanfare, God judges Moses and Aaron as unfit to bring Israel to its promised destination and Aaron expires after transferring his priestly authority to his son Elazar. The proximity of these related stories inspired the midrashic imagination to join them into a conception of integrated leadership.

Jewish Law and “The English Patient”

Jun 14, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Naso

As the Pentagon struggles with the issue of adultery in the military, Americans feast on the photography and melodrama of the film The English Patient. Never have our moral fault lines been so discomforting. Garlanded in Academy Awards, the the film is a straightforward story of adultery in the army, albeit the British in North Africa in World War Two. Ironically, it ends up making a case for the Pentagon’s view that adultery can endanger the security of the military (with Count Amalfi desperately bartering his maps of desert paths for a German place to rescue his injured lover Katherine Clifton), though only after a long, glossy tale of passionate romance.

Finding Sanctity in Community

May 17, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Emor

In Judaism certain religious acts require a minyan. We do not chant from the Torah scroll or recite a haftara without a quorum. For a cantor to lead services that include the recitation of the blessing barkhu or the kedusha in the amida or a mourner’s kaddish likewise needs the presence of a minyan. So does a wedding. Moments of peak sanctity call for community. We attain a sense of God’s concern by entering a space filled with kindred souls. In public worship, Jews past and present are united to in fuse us with the spiritual power to reach for the transcendent.

A Feminist Mandate

Apr 8, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayak-hel

The recent conference in New York City on “Feminism and Orthodoxy” heralds a major escalation in the confrontation between Jewishly well-educated Orthodox feminists and a bitterly defensive rabbinic establishment. The word on the street in the weeks before the conference was that it would be a brief one, implying that the two topics had nothing in common. But reality proved the cynics wrong. Nearly a thousand Orthodox women of all stripes convened for two days of study, prayer and protest to challenge the gender inequities that abound in contemporary Orthodoxy. The plight of women stranded without benefit of a Jewish divorce from their husbands evoked an added measure of outrage.

The Spiritual Significance of the Sacrificial Cult

Mar 29, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Parah | Tzav

Our Hebrew Scripture is a library of books with many voices, a bracing diversity of literary genres and religious opinions. This is a good week to remind ourselves of that noteworthy fact as we struggle through a double dosage of cultic prescriptions. Our parasha stipulates the tasks incumbent on the priests in administering the sacrifices that ordinary Israelites might offer at the Tabernacle. On top of that, because this Shabbat is the third of the four special Shabbatot leading up to Passover, we are treated to an additional reading dealing with the potion prepared from the ashes of an unblemished red heifer for the purpose of ritual purification.

Holy Light: Remembering Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld

Feb 22, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Tetzavveh

This past week at the Seminary, we commemorated the first Yahrzeit of Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld, whose young lives were extinguished one year ago (February 25, 1996) in Jerusalem by the bomb of a Hamas terrorist. Matthew was a second–year rabbinical student spending the year studying intensively at the Seminary’s Beit Midrash, and Sara, who had just graduated Barnard, was about to become his fiancee. We used the occasion of their Yahrzeit to dedicate in their memory a spacious room where Seminary students gather each day till late at night to study Talmud in small groups, havruta–style.

A Thought on Physician-Assisted Suicide

Feb 15, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Terumah

This week Shabbat follows by a day the date assigned by the Talmud (the 7th of Adar) for the death of Moses. The Torah leaves us entirely in the dark as to when Moses died. We are told only at the very end of Deuteronomy that Moses died alone atop Mount Nebo, looking out over the Promised Land. Though advanced in years, Moses did not die of old age: “Moses was 120 years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated (34:7).” That is, he died suddenly, without illness and suffering, or in the words of Rashi, by the touch of a divine kiss (on the basis of the phrase “al pi adonai;” literally, “by the mouth of God” – 34:5).

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