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The Graves of Our Ancestors
Oct 29, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah
I went to visit the graves of my parents the other day, and could not help but think—with this Torah portion looming—of the times when I went with my father (whose name was Abraham, until he changed it) to visit my mother’s grave.
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On Judaism and Islam
Sep 9, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
Jews have prepared for the High Holiday season of repentance and renewal in 2010 with Muslims very much on our minds.
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Emerging From the Wilderness
Aug 7, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Re'eh
In this week’s parashah, the book of Deuteronomy leaves prologue behind as the Israelites come one step closer to exiting the wilderness in which they have so long been wandering. Moses has set forth and fine-tuned the major themes of his final discourse. Now it is time for him to lay out a blueprint of the commandments that will shape and guide the new life awaiting the Children of Israel upon their entry to the Land of Israel.
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Our Covenant with God
Jun 4, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shelah Lekha
When Moses confronts the gravest challenge to his and God’s authority since the golden calf, the negative report of the spies sent to scout the Land of Israel, he responds with a lawyerly argument for divine mercy that is taken directly from the one that had staved off the people’s annihilation by God the first time around. The argument takes the form of a question: What will the Egyptians say if God destroys His people?
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Healing of Body and Mind
Apr 16, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Metzora | Tazria
The Baal Shem Tov, seeking the sort of symbolic meaning in this week’s section of Leviticus that we too search out, found the laws of scaling and scalding, bodily discharge, and fungus in the warp and woof of fabric suggestive of the need for repentance and humility.
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A Pesah Message for My Students
Mar 27, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol | Tzav | Pesah
This week’s Torah portion reports instructions given by God to Moses concerning Aaron and his priestly descendants. The rest of us, as it were, are invited to eavesdrop.
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Innovation and Tradition
Jan 30, 2010 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Beshallah
I’d like to suggest that from the first words of this week’s portion to the last, we find lessons of direct relevance to issues of revelation and commandment, faith and covenant that have been on the minds of thoughtful Jews for centuries and remain matters of concern today.
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The Challenge of Living Torah
Dec 11, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Vayeshev
I don’t think Jews are playing out a tale for which God wrote the plotline many centuries ago. Sometimes, however, the correspondence between archetypal biblical narrative and contemporary Jewish situation is remarkable. Consider today’s parashah as a case in point.
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The Psychology of Our Prayers
Sep 19, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
Even when we are well-settled into friendships, marriages, or parenting, the quality of our connection with the people we care about most in the world has a lot to do with our happiness, our fulfillment in life, and our sense of belonging in the world.
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The God of Israel
Aug 8, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Eikev
Again and again in this week’s portion the Torah commands us, reminds us, pleads with us, to hear the words that it comes to teach…”If/because [eikev] you hear and obey these rules and observe them faithfully,” Moses promises Israel in the very first verse of the parashah, God will favor you, bless you, multiply you (Deut. 7:12–13). If/because [eikev] you do not hear and obey the voice of the Lord your God, Moses warns the people at the close of the following chapter, “you shall certainly perish like the nations the Lord will cause to perish before you” (8:20).
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Lessons From the Wilderness
Jun 13, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
Powerful images of authority dominate this week’s Torah portion. How do these images relate to contemporary readers who—despite our distance from the events in the wilderness—remain part of the people Israel’s progress toward the Promised Land?
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Engaging Our Sons and Daughters at the Seder Table
Apr 4, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Pesah
I’ll be thinking a lot about my roles as father and son at the seder this year. Having lost my dad between last Passover and this one (my mom died eleven years ago), I’ll be sitting down at the seder table for the first time as someone without living parents.
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When Theology Fails
Mar 17, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shemini | Yom Hashoah
There is a fearful symmetry to the three chapters that make up this week’s parashah; symmetry made all the more fearful because the harmonies of theme and structure in Sh’mini contrast so mightily with the awful events it describes.
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The Heart of Pharaoh
Jan 30, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Bo
God “has hardened [Pharoah’s] heart and the hearts of his courtiers” in order to teach them and the entire world a painful and difficult lesson about where true power resides. In order to understand that lesson, I think, we must try to understand Pharaoh.
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Taking the Journey with Abraham
Nov 7, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
Five short verses after he (and we) first encounter that Land on which the Jewish future will turn ever after, a famine sends Abraham down to the place where he (and we) spend the remainder of chapter 12 of Genesis, a foreign land where he gets embroiled in a complex interaction with the Pharaoh that foreshadows a great deal of the text and history to come.
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The Path to Mitzvah
Sep 30, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
If the Torah is fundamentally a book of law, a work intended to instruct us on how to live a life that is holy and good, why did the Torah begin with the story of creation? More precisely, why did the Torah begin with the story of Genesis—of God’s creation of the world—and not the first commandment to the Israelites which is to establish a calendar: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of the months,” found later in Exodus 12?
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Va-ethannan’s Personal Message to Us
Aug 16, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Va'et-hannan
But what really draws me to Va-ethannan, I think, is the way it reaches out to each one of us individually, both pleading and demanding to be heard. It addresses us person by person, one-on-one, in the same way we enter into every serious relationship and tremble with each true love.
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Finding Political Guidance in the Torah
Jun 7, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Naso
We Jews are up to our necks in political concern these days, in part because power and influence are ours to an unprecedented degree. How shall we think about these matters? Is there a Jewish approach to politics in general, and to these sorts of issues in particular?
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The Four Children
Apr 19, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Aharei Mot | Pesah
We are told to probe the narrative of the redemption from Egypt for insights about what is blocking redemption in our own day and how we can work to bring ultimate redemption into being. The question facing us as we approach the seder, then, is this: What shall we tell our children and grandchildren at Passover—particularly the teenagers, college students, and twenty-somethings who are gathered at the seder table?
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How Worship Might Shape Our Minds
Mar 22, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Tzav
Even after years of probing Leviticus for insight, and each year finding more significance in the book’s attempt to sanctify everyday experience, I found myself captured by Douglas’s description of the Levitical system of animal offerings as “philosophizing by sacrifice.” She writes: “Not only in ancient Israel, but in many parts of the world, philosophizing by sacrifice can be quite paradoxical and abstruse.”
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