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Serve God With Joy
Feb 20, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
I recall reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer while in elementary school, and being stumped by a description of the powerful singing in church of “Old Hundred.” What might this “Old Hundred” be, and why was it being sung in church with such fervor? Eventually, I found out that this was Psalm 100, and was sung by the community as it learned that Tom Sawyer was alive, and had mischievously staged his own disappearance.
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How We Can Build the Synagogue of the Future
Feb 13, 2013 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Terumah
If you care deeply about the present and future state of the synagogue, as I do, it’s difficult to resist the temptation to draw lessons from the remarkable vision of communal worship set forth in this week’s Torah portion. I do not intend to resist. Three aspects of the divine plan for the Tabernacle strike me as particularly relevant to our contemporary situation.
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“Fill Our Eyes with Light . . . Cause Our Heart to Cling” (Part 2)
Feb 13, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
Last week we looked at the phrase “ha’er eyenynu” (Fill our eyes with the light of Your Torah), and now let us look more closely at the continuation of the same sentence: “vedabek libeinu bemitzvotekha” (and make our hearts cleave to Your mitzvot) [Siddur Sim Shalom Daily, 32].
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God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
Feb 12, 2013 By Raymond Scheindlin | Commentary | Purim
How is it possible to tell a story of redemption without even once mentioning the name of God?
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Taking Time to Be There
Feb 6, 2013 By Lisa Gelber | Commentary | Mishpatim
Moses needs time to immerse himself in the law and his relationship with God. He needs to experience what it meant to climb this mountain, literally and figuratively. If he didn’t yet know that, God did.
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Finding God in the Darkness
Feb 5, 2013 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Short Video | Va'era
A video Torah commentary.
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“Fill Our Eyes With Light . . . Cause Our Hearts to Cling” (Part 1)
Feb 5, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
Phrases in the siddur are filled with echoes of earlier texts and give birth to newer metaphors and meanings. The blessing immediately before the Shema’ in every morning service contains the phrase “ha’er eyneinu beToratekha vedabek libeinu bemitzvotekha” (Fill our eyes with the light of Your Torah, and make our hearts cleave to Your mitzvot.) [Siddur Sim Shalom, 32.]
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The Curious Case of the Slave Who Refuses Freedom
Feb 5, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Mishpatim
Coming on the heels of the Revelation at Sinai, Parashat Mishpatim opens with laws concerning slaves.
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How We Believe in God
Jan 30, 2013 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Commentary | Yitro
The Mishnah and the two Talmuds mostly address details of Jewish observance; they rarely discuss the purpose of individual commandments, nor how the mitzvot mesh to create an integrated religious ethos.
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Blessings
Jan 30, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
The famous Priestly Blessing (Num. 6: 24–26) is an ambiguous text in our liturgy that appears in various guises. It is presented as a selection for study from the Written Torah each morning (Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays, 5), and is chanted by the leader of the service at the end of the ‘Amidah (43). The text presents the Torah verses as a memory:
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Decimation and Affirmation: A Tale of Two Non-Israelites
Jan 30, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Beshallah
The opening of this week’s Torah reading, Parashat Yitro, stands in stark contrast to the conclusion of last week’s parashah, Beshallah.
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“He Taught Him a Tree” (?!)
Jan 23, 2013 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Beshallah
This week’s parashah contains some of the most memorable narratives in the entire Torah: the splitting of the Reed Sea, the miracle of the manna, the battle with Amalek. In the midst of all these narratives comes a pithily told “little tale.”
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Kol haneshamah tehallel Yah! (All that has breath shall praise God!)
Jan 23, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
This is the final verse of Psalm 150—the culmination of the book of Psalms. Every day our set liturgy includes the final six psalms (145 through 150), and, to my personal sorrow, the pacing of the so-called “preliminary service” generally allows a couple of minutes (at most) for a rushed recitation of these classic and profound poetic texts. Fortunately, in many communities—at least on Shabbat, and even on weekdays—a little more time is allowed for Psalm 150. We find a glorious array of musical interpretations of the text that exemplify the diverse approaches to religious music of contemporary Jewish life. Some examples will be found at the end of this essay.
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Fear to Fortitude
Jan 23, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Beshallah
As the Israelites march toward the Reed Sea, Pharaoh has a notorious change of heart.
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Our God and God of Our Ancestors
Jan 16, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
Many prayers begin with the words “Eloheynu v’Elohei avoteinu” (Our God and God of our ancestors). I hear from so many people that these words are difficult, and an impediment to finding a pathway in Jewish prayer. The word God raises an array of difficulties: people who are inclined to the view “I don’t believe in God” might rightly feel that there is no integrity in addressing their words to God, an entity in whom (or Whom) they do not believe. Others find no security or support in the prayers and traditions of their ancestors, and say Fiddler on the Roof (“Tradition!”) is not enough.
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Afraid of the Dark
Jan 16, 2013 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Bo
I cannot read the stories of the plagues without a knot in my stomach. What kind of God hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that the suffering of both the Egyptians and the enslaved Israelites increases? What kind of God comes up with the death of the firstborn as the “final straw”? What am I supposed to do with these stories as someone who wants to believe in the God of Redemption and Compassion and Justice; who wants to feel that God’s presence in my life?
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Redemption in Place and Time
Jan 16, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bo
In his very first comment on Torah, Rashi, the prolific medieval commentator, made this week’s parashah famous for exegetic eternity.
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From Teaching to Tikkun (Repair)
Jan 13, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Terumah
From the details of law to the minutiae of a building plan, Parashat Terumah moves us into the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle.
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Hamavdil—The Holy One and Separation
Jan 8, 2013 By Samuel Barth | Commentary
We tend to think that the role of religion is to affirm and support an increasing sense of unity in the world. There is much to support such a view. At the end of ‘aleinu (a prayer at the end of every Jewish service), we quote Zechariah 14:9, affirming “ . . . on that day, Adonai will be One and God’s Name will be One.” The text is enigmatic, but certainly speaks of a vision of great unity. Many other texts, in prayers and elsewhere, speak similarly of a quest and vision for this unity. Scholars of mysticism speak of the unio mystica, the experience of unification that is often associated with testimonies of enlightenment.
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Not Rhetoric, but Reality
Jan 8, 2013 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Va'era
One of the more disheartening reports about Israeli society these days is that our brothers and sisters in Israel are simply not as concerned with the struggle for religious pluralism to the degree that we are in North America. Reporting this past week from the JTA, Ben Sales added his voice to the chorus of journalists writing about what many in the Diaspora consider to be of preeminent importance, but what many in the Israeli population are, at best, disinterested in.
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