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Connecting to an Ancient Text

Oct 31, 2009 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

A wondrous quality of Torah study is that you can link the parashah to nearly any time, place, or subject. This puzzle is enjoyed by rabbis every week鈥�how can I connect the ancient text to our contemporary context? I embrace this challenge, yet sometimes it makes me wonder: how much are we gleaning from the text, and how much are we interpolating?

Abraham the Wanderer

Oct 31, 2009 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Lekh Lekha

What inspires one to leave home, to embrace mystery, to seek insight into the nature of our world?

Noah’s Repetition and Contradiction

Oct 24, 2009 By David C. Kraemer | Commentary | Noah

Read the Noah story鈥攖he whole thing, from the very end of Genesis 5 and not just from the beginning of the parashah鈥攁nd you will immediately sense that there is a problem. Why are there so many repetitions, tensions, and outright contradictions? Why are we told twice about Noah’s offspring (5:32 and 6:10)? Why does the story offer two explanations for God’s decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth鈥攐ne explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)?

Our Lying Patriarch

Oct 21, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Toledot

The evidence stared at us: a hot pink eye embedded in dark skin. “Which one of you did this?” my mother demanded. I, of course, knew the secret, having mashed the Bubbilicious bubble gum into a crack in the dark-stained paneling of our family room some hours earlier. My little sister, trying to be helpful, asked with what I knew to be complete innocence: “Well, what kind of gum is it?” Which was all our mother needed to hear to jump to a conclusion that brought her investigation to its end and my sister to her inevitable reprimand.

The Torah and Its Clearly Ambiguous Message

Oct 17, 2009 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Bereishit | Simhat Torah

There is a verse that I love to invoke whenever I teach about “the poetics of biblical narrative,” and it doesn’t come from this week’s portion (but who’s keeping score, anyway?). Instead, it is found in the first extended legal section, Parashat Mishpatim (Exod. 21鈥�24). Loosely translated, this is the text: “In all charges of misunderstanding . . . whereof one party alleges, ‘This is it!’鈥攖he case of both parties shall come before God” (Exod. 22:8); the Hebrew phrase underlying the words “this is it!” is: 讻讬 讛讜讗 讝讛 (ki hu zeh). The verse seems to be addressing a case in which no one side has a total claim on the truth; in such a case, then, one is bidden to consider both possibilities.

Vulnerability and Joy

Oct 10, 2009 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Shemini Atzeret | Sukkot

How do we make sense of two of the central narratives of the holiday of Sukkot that seemingly point us in different emotional directions?

Avraham the Avatar

Oct 7, 2009 By Carol K. Ingall | Commentary | Vayera

Although many of us recognize the word avatar as a representation of the self in computer games (a “mini-me,” or so my granddaughter tells me), in fact the term originates in Hindu mythology. An avatar is a personification or embodiment of a divine principle. While we traditionally refer to Avraham as avinu, our father, perhaps we would get a more nuanced view of this biblical hero by imagining Avraham as an avatar.

God in Mourning

Oct 3, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Noah

Another interpretation of 鈥淎nd on the seventh day the waters of the Flood came upon the earth鈥� (Gen. 7:10)

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Seven days the Holy One, Blessed be He, mourned for His world before bringing the flood, the proof being the text, 鈥淎nd the Lord regretted that He had made man on earth, and His heart was saddened鈥� (Gen. 6:6).

Innovation in Jewish Tradition

Oct 3, 2009 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Sukkot

I have yet to cave and get a Kindle, but I will be honest and say that it will probably be within a few weeks. From my years of schooling, I have gained an appreciation for, and on some level, a preference for the printed word鈥攖hat is, a tangible, heavy, dusty, written word. I like holding a book, turning the pages, feeling the weight of the paper鈥攁nd the Kindle just seems to fall flat. Nonetheless, the idea of browsing The New Republic and Commentary Magazine on one device seems almost a little bit too exciting to pass up.

Your Zeyde the Pilgrim

Sep 29, 2009 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Try to imagine your zeyde, born and bred in Lithuania, dressed as a Pilgrim. I did. Like any other American schoolchild, I learned how the Pilgrims came to these shores on the Mayflower, how they celebrated their first harvest together with the Wampanoag Indians, and how this celebration became the basis for our holiday of Thanksgiving. For reasons that were not clear to me at the time, I tried to picture my Litvak grandfather as a Pilgrim, but the moment I did I started laughing.

Psychotherapy as a Lens for Conceptualizing Teshuvah

Sep 26, 2009 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Shabbat Shuvah | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

I have always thought it interesting that Maimonides places so much emphasis on words in the process called teshuvah, even for transgressions not against other human beings. After quoting the verse from the Torah that speaks about the importance of confession (vidui) as part of the process for repairing a wrong enacted in the world (Num. 5:5鈥�6), Maimonides emphasizes that this must be done with words. Teshuvah cannot be limited to an internal process of reflection. Maimonides stresses that any internal commitments must ultimately get expressed with words and counsels that the more one engages in verbal confession and elaborates on this subject, the more praiseworthy one is (Laws of Teshuvah 1:1).

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.

The Distance to God

Sep 14, 2009 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Hayyei Sarah

Uncertainty presents one of the greatest psychological challenges we face in life. The ancient Rabbis addressed ambiguities in the Torah and in life by seeking wisdom from connections between those worlds. This midrash reveals how they understood prayer as a cathartic response to the travails that test our faith and how such an outpouring can transform our reality.

Standing at the Foot of God’s Mountain

Aug 29, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Ki Tetzei

My beautiful daughter is no longer a newborn at fourteen weeks. Even more striking than the swift flow of time since her birth is the fleeting function of memory. I can no longer picture her in my mind as she looked in the first few weeks, just as I can no longer imagine my five-year-old son the way he looked when he was fourteen weeks old鈥攐r my little sister, now in her thirties, as she looked when we were kids. The images replace themselves, as a teacher of mine once put it.

Sanctifying Our Days

Aug 22, 2009 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Shofetim | Rosh Hashanah

What constitutes a life well-lived, a life of blessing, a life lived to its fullest? With this week marking Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of a new month, we pray for God to renew our lives in the coming month: “Grant us a long life, a peaceful life with goodness and blessing, sustenance and physical vitality, a life informed by purity and piety . . . a life of abundance and honor, a life embracing piety and love of Torah, a life in which our heart’s desires for goodness will be fulfilled” (Birkat HaHodesh). This Rosh Hodesh offers us a particularly auspicious moment to dwell upon this question of a life well-lived, for this week marks the beginning of Elul鈥攁 month in which we are encouraged to take a heshbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of our souls. At its essence, this idea demands that we look inward and become critical of ourselves and the year that has passed. This week’s parashah, Shof’tim, gives us one definition of a life of blessing that we can use in evaluating where we have come from and where we are going.

Repentance in the Heart of Summer

Aug 15, 2009 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Re'eh

At the end of Friday-night services this past July fourth weekend, the rabbi of a major urban synagogue beseeched those gathered to celebrate the secular holiday by joining the congregation or renewing their memberships immediately. The rabbi explained that this year, due to the global economic crisis, congregational finances had become a vital concern. A budget shortfall had forced the clergy and lay leadership to cancel their policy of selling tickets for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services to nonmembers in order to “encourage” more people to pay some level of membership dues. More grievously, the rabbi noted that the congregation’s diminished financial position might require cuts in social action programs upon which the neighborhood’s less fortunate depend. An infusion of cash from membership dues, though, would limit the impact of these cuts.

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鈥�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).

The Book of Devarim and the Birth of Talmud Torah

Jul 25, 2009 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Devarim

Perhaps the greatest difference between the book of Devarim, which we begin this Shabbat, and the other four books of the Torah is the switch in modality. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers describe a story as it unfolds. The characters of these books experience these events as they occur in the moment. Not so the book of Devarim.

Our Hope and Despair

Jul 18, 2009 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Masei | Mattot | Tishah Be'av

We are now in the period known as the Three Weeks: the weeks between the fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz, which marks the day the outer walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Babylonians, and the ninth of Av, when the Babylonians destroyed the Temple. These weeks are the low point of the year. In a dramatic reversal of the ordinary mourning process, which begins in its starkest intensity and lifts over time as the mourners are comforted, these weeks of mourning increase in intensity as they move, inevitably, to the destruction of God’s house and the banishment of the people into exile. The prophetic readings drive home that we have brought this horrible tragedy on ourselves. This week’s haftarah, from chapter 2 of Jeremiah, is the second of three haftarot of affliction. Jeremiah chastises the people for having strayed from God and God’s Torah. 

The Torah’s Middle Path

Jul 11, 2009 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Pinehas

Is there ever a discernible gap between God’s morality and the Torah, or is the Torah itself our only window into the realm of divine values? Put another way, is it permissible for a reverent Jew to challenge the morality of a law, and to base this challenge on his or her own understanding of justice and thus God’s will?