Our Individual Responsibility to the Community

Mar 20, 2010 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayikra

Four months ago, an Orthodox rabbi here in Israel made headlines by urging his yeshiva students to resist any orders to evacuate settlements in the West Bank. In his book entitled Revivim, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed writes, “a simple halakhah is that it is forbidden for any person, whether a soldier or an officer, to participate in the strictly forbidden act of expelling Jews from their homes and handing over any portion of the Land of Israel to enemies . . . Those who violate this violate several commandments of Torah” (Ha’aretz, November 18, 2009). Rabbi Melamed’s directives rightfully caused a stir in all segments of Israeli society.

Greeting God’s Presence in Our Lives

Mar 13, 2010 By Barry Holtz | Commentary | Shabbat Hahodesh

This week’s double parashah brings the Bible’s second book to a dramatic close. Think how far this people has come in these forty chapters: from an oppressed minority enslaved to a capricious and dangerous Pharaoh, they have become the free followers of the Almighty One, and the recipients of God’s greatest gift, the Torah.

The Dangers of Sacred Space

Mar 5, 2010 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Ki Tissa

For more than a month during this time of year, we read about the mishkan, the Tabernacle, also called the ohel mo’ed, or Tent of Meeting. Parashiyot T’rumah and T’tzavveh, which we read the past two weeks, contain what amount to blueprints in prose format. These readings describe exactly how the Children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai should construct the mishkan.

The Meaning of Aaron’s Holy Garments

Feb 27, 2010 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Tetzavveh

The Torah portion of T’tzavveh continues God’s instructions to the Israelites for building the Tabernacle in the Wilderness—the central concern of the previous week’s Torah portion (T’rumah) and the next three portions as well (Ki Tissa, Va-yakhel, and P’kudei). Altogether, the Tabernacle and its accoutrements are the most prominent subject matter of the entire last section of the book of Exodus, comprising chapters 25 through 40. These portions cover many details, the precise explanation for many of which remains somewhat uncertain to this very day.

The Golden Calf and the Tabernacle

Feb 20, 2010 By Stephen A. Geller | Commentary | Terumah

Just before Parashat T’rumah begins, the divine Glory descends on Mount Sinai for six days, covering it with a cloud. On the seventh day God summons Moses, who enters the cloud, ascends the mountain and remains there for forty days and nights. The parashah itself begins with a divine command to take offerings (t’rumah) of precious metals, rare cloths, and other items to construct a mishkan, a tenting place (“tabernacle”) in the midst of Israel, together with all its sacred objects and vessels.

Religion, Science, and Wonder

Feb 17, 2010 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

Look up at the natural world, and what do you see? You see a world filled with so much wonder and greatness that only a divine being could have created it. However, modern science explains these wonders with complex explanations and equations, showing that God might not have been the creator of this world. Dr. Janna Levin, professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College, and Rabbi Shai Held, cofounder and rosh yeshiva at Mechon Hadar and chair in Jewish Thought look at these different thoughts.

Biblical Original Intent

Feb 12, 2010 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Mishpatim

Does the text of the Torah really mean what I am claiming it means or am I reading too much into it? Am I pushing my own agenda and value system on words that intend something else? What are the larger religious values that animate certain laws of the Torah? How does my own value system influence my reading of Torah?

Awakening to the Divine Radiance

Feb 6, 2010 By Eitan Fishbane | Commentary | Yitro

This Shabbat we read the most pivotal narrative in all of scripture: the revelation of God to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, the reception of the Torah as the divine word transmitted through Moses. From this moment forth, everything changes. The people enter into a covenantal relationship with God; they accept the life of mitzvot as their responsibility and the obligation of their descendents. At the heart of this narrative is the transmission of the Ten Commandments (or the Ten Statements [aseret ha-dibbrot]), the core principles understood by later Jewish tradition to be the root and foundation of all the mitzvot, the fabric of Jewish religious life.

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.

Realpolitik and the Exodus

Jan 23, 2010 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Bo

This devar Torah is about religion, politics, and war. We are a country currently fighting two foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and a war on terror at home and abroad. My intention is not to tilt Republican or Democrat; rather, the point of these words of Torah is to reflect on what it means to be Jewish under these circumstances. Or to ask in the classic rabbinic formulation: what can this week’s Torah portion teach us?

Israel’s Self-Emancipation

Jan 16, 2010 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Va'era

There is a lot of action in Parashat Va-era, but not much of it directly involves the people of Israel. Their role is primarily to witness the increasingly violent confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh. Given last week’s negative response of the Israelite elders to Moses and Aaron, this passivity is quite understandable. His early experience with Israel has demoralized Moses, for he objects to God’s renewed command this week with bitter words: “In fact, even the Israelites haven’t listened to me, so how will Pharaoh ever heed me, and I have impeded speech!” (6:12).

Updating Our Mindset

Jan 9, 2010 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Shemot

The conclusion of Genesis and the beginning of the book of Exodus coincide this year with not only the end of a secular year, but the winding down of a decade. Of all its nicknames shopped around during the last days of December (the Ohs, Noughties, Aughts, or, as Slate Magazine put it, the Uh-Ohs), “the digital decade” is the one that I find most fitting. The past ten years have brought us blogging, Googling, YouTubing, tweeting on Twitter, and updating our Facebook statuses. Each progressive step (if we really want to call it progress) has brought new meaning to here and now. What these technologies have demonstrated is that we have a virtual obsession with being current—with letting people know exactly what we are thinking, doing, or experiencing.

Living a Poetic Existence

Jan 2, 2010 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Vayehi

For many—if not most—of us, death arouses great anxiety. Much of our emotionality regarding the end of life comes from the way that death changes how we perceive ourselves. This midrash about Jacob’s deathbed scene presents ancient rabbinic wisdom about mortality based on insights from key passages in the Hebrew Bible.

The Painful Truth

Dec 25, 2009 By Eliezer B. Diamond | Commentary | Vayiggash

Sometimes the midrash takes up a difficult verse and offers an interpretation that is even more opaque. This week’s Torah portion contains an example of this. We are told that initially Jacob refused to believe the brothers when they told him that Joseph was still among the living. However, “when they recounted all that Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to transport him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived” (Gen. 45:27).

From Darkness into Light

Dec 19, 2009 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Miketz | Hanukkah

We Jews know that stories are not simple things. As a people, we tell tales that place us in the drama of world history and connect us with a common past and a shared future. Our national stories challenge us as individuals and as a community; they provide us with contexts to work out moral dilemmas, and help us reflect collectively on what it means to live life well.

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.

Multiple Beginnings

Dec 5, 2009 By David Marcus | Commentary | Vayishlah

Attentive readers may note that our Parashat Va-yishlah does not start at the beginning of its chapter (Genesis 32), rather it starts four verses down with the words “va-yishlah Yaakov malachim lefanav” (Now Jacob sent messengers ahead of him). The actual chapter starts with the words “vayashkem Lavan babboqer” (Early in the morning Laban arose) (see the enumeration in Etz Hayim), and some printed Hebrew editions, such as the Koren Tanakh before 1992, and English Bibles, such as the King James Version and the New Revised Standard Translation, start the chapter with the next verse, “veYaakov halach ledarko” (Now Jacob went on his way). From these three beginnings we see that there are various ways of starting the story of Jacob’s meeting with Esau, the story with which our parashah commences.

How to Read a Text

Nov 28, 2009 By Walter Herzberg | Commentary | Vayetzei

Michael Fishbane’s book Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology is a scholarly work that I find compelling, especially in those instances where the author places emphasis on experiencing the act of biblical interpretation, which “is understood to foster diverse modes of attention to textual details, which in turn cultivate correlative forms of attention to the world, and divine reality.” In other words, paying close attention to the details in the Torah is the path to deriving meaning from the Torah.

A Conversation on Creation and Evolution

Nov 17, 2009 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video

One of the most hotly debated contradictions between the Bible and current scientific knowledge is creationism and Darwin’s theory of evolution. In this program, two leading philosophers, Lenn Goodman and Philip Kitcher, address this perceived conflict.

Athiests and the Torah

Nov 14, 2009 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah

Oh, if the atheists read the Torah! During this week’s parashah, we encounter a text that could have been fodder for the atheist argument against prayer. Shortly before his death, Abraham calls his senior servant for one last assignment. The servant is to return to Abraham’s homeland to find a fitting wife for Isaac, and, after swearing that Abraham’s bidding will be done, he sets off.

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