Conquering Passions
Oct 28, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah
My favorite Jewish ritual is the recitation of havdalah at the end of Shabbat. It is a love rooted in childhood.
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Isaiah Berlin and Kant
Oct 21, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
I like Isaiah Berlin’s favorite quotation from Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.”
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The Power of Prayer
Oct 3, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yom Kippur
The High Holy Days don’t play to our strength. The extended services put a premium on prayer, an activity at which we are no longer very adept. Yom Kippur asks of us to spend an entire day in the synagogue immersed in prayer. But we find it easier to believe in God than to pray to God. It is this common state of discomfort that prompts me to share with you a few thoughts on the art of Jewish praying.
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On Baseball and Jewish Endurance
Sep 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
Seminary lore has it that Solomon Schechter advised the young Louis Ginzberg, when he joined the faculty, to master the game of baseball.
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Praying for Rain
Sep 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
Rainfall has been sparse this summer in much of the northeast, and the reservoirs of New York City are some 24% lower than normal for this time of year.
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The Pursuit of Peace
Jul 2, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pinehas | Sukkot
Experience often has a way of eroding our ideals. While the evidence for this sad fact abounds, I wish to illustrate it anew in the exegetical fate of a passage in this week’s parasha. The parasha concludes with a succinct statement of the sacrifices to be offered in the Tabernacle throughout the year.
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On Korah and Spinoza
Jul 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah
When I was a rambunctious kid growing up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the name of Benedict de Spinoza came to me as easily as that of Ted Williams or Stan Musial or Sid Luckman. If the latter three were among my childhood heroes, the former meant a great deal to my father. He spoke often of Spinoza’s grand conception of God as the sum total of all that exists. Indeed, body and mind were but two attributes of God’s infinite nature. There were countless others which we would never know. For my father, Spinoza represented the fullest and finest expression of Judaism’s historic quest to understand the endless diversity of existence in monotheistic terms. On many a Shabbat I was treated to a discourse that eluded the grasp of my inattentive mind. I remember only the stirring intensity of his fascination. Spinoza provided a haven in which the rational bent of my father’s mind and the religious hunger of his heart could both find comfort.
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Biblical Espionage
Jun 24, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shelah Lekha | Tishah Be'av
The story of the twelve spies is well-known and straightforward. As Israel approaches the Promised Land from the south, God instructs Moses to assemble a band of spies, one prominent man from each tribe to measure the strength of its inhabitants: “Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell, good or bad? Are the towns they live in, open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land” (Numbers 13:18-20).
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A Backstory for Moses
Jun 17, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
For all the grit and grandeur of his character, Moses could never be the biographical subject of a commercially successful book. We don’t know enough about his private life. New books on Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King sell because they slake our thirst for the salacious. By illuminating their private lives, their authors presume to deepen our understanding of their noteworthy public careers. But by now the quest has become an unedifying end in itself.
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Universal Service of God
Jun 3, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bemidbar
Though the Jerusalem Temple is long gone, time has not erased the threefold division of ancient Israel into Kohanim, Leviim and Yisraelim. Ritual, as it so often does, helps to preserve collective memory. In many synagogues, the first two aliyot to the Torah are still given to a Kohen and a Levi. Yisraelim, who constitute the majority of us, are not called to the Torah until the third aliyah. On Passover the three matzot that bedeck our seder plates are named (from top to bottom) Kohen, Levi and Yisrael. In old cemeteries, a pair of hands symbolic of the priestly benediction often mark the tombstone of a Kohen, while the grave of a Levi whose task was to pour water over the hands of the priests before the recitation of the blessing, is signified by a tilted pitcher.
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The Man Who Challenged Exile
May 31, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behukkotai
The greatest Jewish historian in America of the last generation was Salo Wittmayer Baron, who died in 1989 at the age of 94. Born in Galicia and trained in Vienna, he became the first professor of Jewish history at an American university in 1930, when invited to join the prestigious history department of Columbia University. With unmatched erudition and energy, Baron wrote authoritatively on nearly every aspect of Jewish history. In 1937 he published a highly original three–volume synthesis of all of Jewish history, which he called by the balanced title of A Social and Religious History of the Jews. After the Holocaust he transformed it into a second edition that would grow to 18 volumes by the time of his death, without going beyond the middle of the seventeenth century.
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An Ancient Social Ethic
May 20, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behar
One winter Friday evening after services, I happened to walk home in the company of a talkative Seminary student. As we made our way down Broadway, we passed a weary and emaciated man whispering for some spare change. On Shabbat I pay less heed to such heartrending pleas because I don’t have any money with me. Neither did my young companion. Yet he politely interrupted our animated conversation and asked the man whether he would like a sandwich. When he responded with evident joy that he would, the student pulled out a neatly wrapped sandwich from his plastic bag and gave it to him. Obviously, unlike me, the student did not allow Shabbat to prevent him from aiding the homeless who crowd the sidewalks of Broadway in the midst of the academic acropolis known as Morningside Heights. Though we met no more homeless before we parted company, for all I knew my companion still had another sandwich or two left in his bag to feed the hungry. His unobtrusive display of forethought and compassion stirred me deeply, as it filled me with pride.
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How We Strengthen Each Other
May 17, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behukkotai
From the messianic vision of a society where divine sovereignty preserves economic equality for all, we descend to the mundane subject of funding the sanctuary. The book of Leviticus ends where it began, with the Tabernacle as a sacred institution that needs to be maintained annually. It is a subject that arouses my sympathy. I can readily testify that the holy lacks the capacity to sustain itself. It depends on the commitment and generosity of many in society who appreciate its unique value.
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To Save a Life
May 6, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Kedoshim
Passover this year was not a festival of freedom for Alisa Flatow of West Orange, New Jersey. The Brandeis junior was rendered brain dead by a piece of shrapnel on April 9, when a Palestinian suicide bomber drove his van of explosives into a busload of Israelis near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip. But before her father Stephen allowed his daughter to be taken off the respirator in Beersheva Hospital, he snatched the last measure of life from her limp body: her undamaged organs and corneas were removed “as a lasting contribution to the people of Israel.”
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“After the Death…”
Apr 29, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Aharei Mot
The name of this week’s parasha, “After the Death,” captures our state of mind as Americans. In the wake of the carnage in Oklahoma City we fear acts of terrorism more than acts of nature. An earthquake or hurricane can be devastating, but never vicious. As it smashes our pride, an act of nature fills us with awe, not loathing or revulsion. In one horrifying episode, we realize again the stark truth that for all of humanity’s daunting conquests of nature, we have barely begun to conquer ourselves. Americans are as vulnerable to the demented fury of the allegedly aggrieved as anyone else.
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On the Sanctification of Time
Apr 8, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Metzora
For as long as I knew her, my mother suffered from psoriasis. Her elbows were scaly and her shoulders covered with a patina of dandruff. A close look at her hair would show the lesions on her head from which it came. Psoriasis is not life-threatening, merely discomforting and unsightly. It is related to nerves as much as anything and can flare up with stress.
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The Sanctity of the Torah
Apr 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Hahodesh | Tazria
It is not often that we read from three sifrei Torah on one Shabbat. But this week Shabbat displays a bit of the pageantry we associate with Simhat Torah because of the convergence of three sacred moments: the regular parasha for the week, Tazri·a; the first day of the new month of Nisan (Rosh Hodesh); and the fourth of the four special Sabbaths before Passover, Shabbat ha-Hodesh. So in addition to the sefer Torah forTazri·a, we take out two other scrolls for the readings from Numbers (28:9-15) and Exodus (12:1-20) appropriate for the occasions. To read from three books of the Torah out of the same scroll would be unwieldy and time-consuming (a lot of holy rolling!). Hence three scrolls, to avoid burdening the congregation with distracting delays.
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When Religious Leadership Fails
Mar 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemini
“Joy waits around for no one. The person who celebrates today may not be celebrating tomorrow, nor the person who is afflicted today may not be afflicted tomorrow.” This is the sober comment of the midrash on Aaron’s tragedy. At the culmination of his installation as priest of the Tabernacle, his two sons are struck down by God’s wrath. The same divine fire which had just descended from above to consume Aaron’s altar offering, a public sign of God’s favor, returns to kill Nadab and Abihu when they commit a cultic infraction. What began with exaltation ends in grief (Leviticus 9:23-24; 10:1-3).
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A New Ark of the Covenant
Mar 4, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pekudei
The heart of Israel’s ornate Tabernacle in the wilderness was the Ark of the Covenant. From above the extended wings of the two cherubim affixed on top of the Ark, God’s voice would emanate to address Moses. It constituted the holiest spot in the Tabernacle, and was approached by the High Priest but once a year on Yom Kippur. Moreover, the Ark was the first part of the sanctuary that Moses was instructed to build. After inviting Israel to make “Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8),” God immediately continues, “They shall make an ark of acacia wood… (Exodus 25:10).”
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Why Leviticus?
Mar 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayikra
A couple of years ago, a commercial publisher put out a new popular, abridged edition of the Bible. Among the omissions was the entire book of Leviticus, whose preoccupation with arcane ritual allegedly holds no interest for the modern reader. I suspect that many of us would agree. We prefer prophets to priests, ethics to ritual and verbal prayer to animal sacrifices. Our egalitarian sensibility is likewise offended by hierarchical religion.
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