91快播

From Slaves of Pharaoh to Servants of God

Jan 8, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Va'era

The opening of Parashat Va’era shows God reiterating the ancestral promise of redemption to a still reluctant Moses.

God-naming

Jan 8, 2016 By Reuven Greenvald | Commentary | Va'era

鈥淎nd God spoke to Moshe, and [God] said to him: I am YHVH. I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzhak, and to Ya鈥檃kov as El Shaddai, but by my name YHVH I was not known to them鈥� (Exodus 6:2鈥�3).

When God shifts from using the ancient El Shaddai (usually translated as 鈥淕od Almighty鈥�) to YHVH, meaning, 鈥淚 will be what I will be,鈥� the divine-human relationship becomes more intimate.  

Words Fail Me

Jan 8, 2016 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Va'era

This common idiom鈥攕o casually tossed off in a moment of surprise鈥攅xpresses a deep truth. Words do indeed fail us, sometimes to tragic effect. 

That is the way the Zohar (the foundational text of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism) understands our exile in Egypt: as the exile of speech, a failure of words. In this reading, the breakdown of speech is both cause and effect of our enslavement, while healing and redeeming speech鈥攆inding our voice鈥攊s both the process and hallmark of redemption. 

A Study in Redemption

Jan 28, 2012 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Va'era

If you followed last week’s Torah portion closely, you are probably sensing that this week’s portion, in the words of Yogi Berra, is “d茅j脿 vu all over again.” Last week, in Parashat Shemot, we read an account of Moses’s lineage, of God’s announcing that He will take the people out of Egypt, of a staff turning into a snake and water into blood, of Moshe’s speech-impairment, and of God’s appointing Aaron as surrogate spokesperson for Moshe. Every one of these topics appears in this week’s parashah too.

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 , 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.

Divine Compassion

Dec 27, 2013 By Julia Andelman | Commentary | Va'era

The biblical book that we began last week鈥擲hemot鈥攊s known in English as Exodus, a name that highlights one of the key dramatic episodes of the book.

Eternity in a Word

Jan 16, 2015 By Joel Alter | Commentary | Va'era

God鈥檚 name YHVH is the verb 鈥渢o be鈥� with the past, present, and future tenses folded into the same conjugation: Eternity or Being in a single word.

The Lessons of Va-era

Jan 5, 2008 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Va'era

This week鈥檚 parashah abounds in venerable theological problems, beginning with its name and opening verses. How could it be that God 鈥渁ppeared鈥� to the ancestors but that some aspect of God鈥攐r some truth articulated in God鈥檚 name鈥攚as not 鈥渕ade known鈥� to them and will be revealed only now, to Moses? The answer that seems most persuasive to me bears a lesson that, like so many others in the Torah, is not so much theological as ethical; it teaches far less about the nature of God than it does about human responsibility.