The Large Significance of the Littlest Letter
Jun 28, 2024 By Malka Strasberg Edinger | Commentary | Shelah Lekha
Could one tiny letter really be so important? At the beginning of this week’s parashah, as Moshe sends twelve scouts to tour the Land of Canaan, we are told that Moshe changed Joshua’s name from Hoshea to Yehoshua.
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The Journey
Jun 21, 2024 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
In other words, the path forward is never clear, and God isn’t a divine GPS. Revelation and faith shape our vision of where we want to go; they offer a compass pointing to true north, orienting us in the general direction of that vision. But to get there, we need maps, road signs, traffic signals, and human guides with a variety of expertise—religious and secular.
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What Blessing Do You Need Now?
Jun 14, 2024 By Andrea Merow | Commentary | Naso
In Parashat Naso we learn the blessing used by so many, called birkat kohanim, the blessing of the priests. Amid our longest parashah, nestled between laws of the Nazirites and final preparations for how to use the Tabernacle, our holy space, God teaches that people can use their words and actions to bless one another, all while noting that our blessings come from The Holy One.
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Becoming Like the Wilderness
Jun 7, 2024 By Eitan Fishbane | Commentary | Bemidbar | Shavuot
With the start of Sefer Bemidbar, the narrative of the Torah turns to the long journey of Benei Yisrael through the wilderness—punishment for the sin of the Golden Calf and preparation for entry into the Land of Israel. Passage into the sacred terrain first requires an arduous ordeal of wandering—a physical process of movement and quest. Penitence, pilgrimage, and transformation are anchored in the space of wilderness.
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The Terrifying Third Aliyah of Behukkotai
May 31, 2024 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Commentary | Behukkotai | Shavuot
Why do we continue to read such horrible curses, and another passage much like it in Parashat Ki Tavo (Deut. 28:1–68), each year? The simplest answer is that we read the entirety of the Torah each year, omitting nothing. However, the Mishnah (Megillah 3:6) already notes something special about the curses of the Leviticus passage: “The section of curses must not be broken up but must all be read by one person.”
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What Can a Bird and a Seed Teach Us About Shemitah?
May 24, 2024 By Yael Hammerman | Commentary | Behar
In Parashat Behar, God tells the Israelites that when they enter the land that God will give them, “the Land shall observe a Sabbath of the Adonai”—veshavta ha’aretz Shabbat l’Adonai (Lev. 25:2). This becomes known as the shemitah year. For six years, you can work to your heart’s content—you can sow, prune, and gather, but in the seventh year, the land shall have a full, complete rest: shabbat shabbaton yihiyeh la’aretz (Lev. 25:4)!
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Are We Just Speaking, or Truly Communicating?
May 17, 2024 By Loraine Enlow | Commentary | Emor
Perhaps the breaking of the formula for our parashah’s irregular emor is about more than just words. Using its characteristic wordplay, the Midrash connects the parashah’s emor here to omer in Psalm 19:3 (spelled the same way, but as a poetic noun): “day to day utters speech (omer), and night to night reveals knowledge.” It explains that the day and the night are negotiating the giving and borrowing of time from each other to create the cycles of the year between the equinoxes. Reading the next verse in the psalm, we see “there is no speech (omer) . . .” Or as the Midrash puts it, “they pay each other back harmoniously, without a contract.”
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What Do the Dead Know?
May 3, 2024 By Jonathan Boyarin | Commentary | Aharei Mot
This week’s Torah portion begins with the words “after the death,” referring to the death of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu. I appreciate the chance to contribute this week’s commentary, since I’m currently teaching a course titled “Death, Dying, and the Dead” at JTS. Much of the course is about Jewish death rituals, but I also aim to convince my students that Jewishness per se is inconceivable without some notion of the continuing presence of the dead in the world of the living. The tradition for the most part seems to take this continued presence for granted, though questions arose about exactly how it manifests.
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