The Power of the Tzadik
Oct 16, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah
Last month Columbia University Business School honored Aaron Feuerstein with its 1996 Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics. I attended the ceremony and was profoundly stirred.
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A New Purpose to the Creation Story
Oct 12, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
It happens every year: A fresh, slow reading of the Torah brings to light things I had not noticed before. Like Hagar lost in the wilderness with her son Ishmael, I failed to see the well which had always been there till God opened my eyes (Genesis 21:19). No chapter of the Torah is more familiar to me than the first, with its compressed and majestic story of the creation of the world. And yet here I sit astir with insights that eluded me till now.
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The Path Towards Perfection
Sep 13, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
When Louis Finkelstein was Chancellor of the Seminary and I was a rabbinical student, he would always start the opening breakfast of the year by reciting the verse from Second Isaiah (57:19): “Peace, peace unto those from afar and near.” consisting of but four words in Hebrew, the verse offered a ringing welcome to students new and old, those coming from abroad and those from nearby. Word was that the custom dated back to Solomon Schechter, whom Dr. Finkelstein revered.
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Our Capacity for Evil, Our Capacity for Good
Jul 27, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Va'et-hannan
On the first anniversary of the bomb blast which erased 168 lives in the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the New York Times ran a photograph on the front page of Jannie Coverdale, who had lost two grandsons.
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Jewish Time
Jul 13, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
The tantalizingly fragmented book of Numbers closes with a new generation of Israelites, born and bred in the wilderness, poised to cross the Jordan from the west at Jericho.
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Wealth and Ego
Jun 22, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah
Our parasha this week bears and perpetuates the name of Korah, the arch rebel against Moses’s leadership.
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There Are No Shortcuts
Jun 8, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
The nation Moses brought out of Egypt shared neither his vision nor faith.
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Who Was Nethanel Ben Zuar?
Jun 1, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Naso
You will indulge me, I hope, if I stay with the minor biblical figure of Nethanel son of Zuar, leader of the tribe of Issachar, for another week.
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How We Acquire Our Names
May 18, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bemidbar
I am not the same person I was last year when we read the book of Numbers in the synagogue.
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Death and Life
May 4, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Emor
Death has been a frequent visitor this year at the Seminary, felling young and old alike, as if the assassination of Mr. Rabin on November 4 was a harbinger of things to come. Rarely have young people, so sheltered from death in our self–indulgent society, been more sorely tested. Some of the deceased, like Professors Shraga Abramson, Moshe Davis and Cantor Max Wohlberg, died in old age after long careers of lasting achievement, both in Israel and in America, including many years of teaching at the Seminary. Others were cut down in the prime of life: Professor Seth Brody, a graduate of our Rabbinical School and frequent visiting member of our faculty, by cancer, at the height of his powers, just a few years after attaining a full–time appointment at Haverford College, and Matt Eisenfeld, a second year rabbinical student at the Seminary, and his fiancee to be, Sara Duker, a graduate of Barnard College and active member of the Seminary community, by a suicide bomber on February 25 in Jerusalem, denying the world the fulfillment of their radiant promise.
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The Word is Flesh and Bread
Apr 20, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Metzora | Tazria
For Jews, the Hebrew Bible has always been a canon without closure, and the key to that historic paradox is the way we read it. Midrash posits more than one meaning to a word, verse or book. The literal meaning does not begin to exhaust the contents of the sacred text. Beneath the surface lie deeper meanings waiting to be tapped by resourceful readers. What distinguishes a divine from a human text, the Rabbis contended, is a multiplicity of meanings. In their sensitive hands, Scripture (the Tanakh) never lost its pliability: a finite number of books were made to yield an infinity of new readings.
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A Beacon for the Years that Lie Ahead
Mar 30, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Tzav | Tishah Be'av
The Talmud tells that at the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in the year 586 B.C.E., the following poignant scene unfolded: “Many clusters of young priests ascended to the roof of the sanctuary with its keys in their hands and said: Lord of the Universe, since we lacked the merit to be trustworthy caretakers, let these keys be returned to Your possession.’ They threw them in the air and half-a-hand, so it appeared, stretched forth to take them in. The young priests then jumped directly into the flames.
To Be Heard Is to Be Helped
Mar 23, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayikra
Translations conceal as much as they convey.
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Torah in the Face of Tragedy
Mar 9, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa
The month of Adar has hardly been a herald of joy for our people this year, as it traditionally is.
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Memory: Judaism’s Lifeblood
Mar 2, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Purim
My father died 14 years ago. This week I will observe his Yahrzeit once again.
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Forging Faith: Persistent Human Effort Vs. Divine Miracles
Feb 3, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beshallah
The end of a story often illuminates its beginning.
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Asking Questions
Jan 27, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bo
Isidor I. Rabi, who was born in Austria in 1898, won the Nobel prize in physics in 1944.
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Judaism and the Afterlife
Jan 6, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayehi
The title of this week’s parasha is full of irony.
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Abraham the Noble Warrior
Nov 4, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
The Torah does not give us a complete biography of Abraham, only a series of striking vignettes.
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A Bold Exegetical Gambit
Nov 2, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei
Why does Jacob abandon the security of his parents home in Beer-sheba?
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