The Meaning of Benjamin’s Name
Dec 16, 2000 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Vayishlah
Child-raising in today’s Jewish America is serious business. The prime virtue is preparation. The drive to be prepared reaches its climax in the test preparation industry. All responsible parents must ensure that their children are thoroughly prepped for the standardized tests that open the doors to good schools and, ultimately, good jobs. Especially diligent parents don’t wait until high school. The drive to organize everything for a child in advance extends not only to infancy but to the prenatal period. It is not uncommon for parents to find out the gender of the fetus, schedule a caesarian section on a particular day, and, if a boy is expected, reserve a mohel and a caterer. Naturally, these parents have already selected a name for the to-be-born child.
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Jacob’s Prayer for Lasting Peace
Dec 9, 2000 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei
My grandchildren call their grandparents “Sabba” and “Savta.” These ancient Aramaic words for grandfather and grandmother are firmly ensconced in the vocabulary of contemporary Hebrew. Like “Abba” and “Imma” (the Hebrew words for father and mother), they are terms of address and endearment. They ring with love and intimacy. But they also connect us to something far beyond our family circle. They bind us to the State of Israel, where the language is Hebrew, and to the history of the Jewish people, whose literary, if not spoken language was always Hebrew. To make use of such linguistic fragments in our personal lives locates us in a cultural context and continuum that resonates with deep meaning.
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Two Brothers, Two Candidates
Dec 2, 2000 By Joshua Heller | Commentary | Toledot | Purim
This week’s parashah, Tol’dot, tells the story the story of Isaac and Rebecca’s twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau is born with a slight advantage of age, with Jacob born close at his heels. The two brothers vie, each with measures of bluster and guile and with the support of a favoring authority figure, for the birthright and the destiny of a nation. This story has been played out more than once in history- most recently between two candidates in our own day.
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The Torah’s Slip of the Tongue
Nov 25, 2000 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah
There’s a certain delight in catching a person in a “slip of the tongue”, a so-called “Freudian slip”. Unintentionally, the person speaking has let us into his inner thoughts and revealed a concealed, sometimes profound, perception. In our Torah portion this week, we seem to be privy to just such a slip of the tongue – or slip of the text, in this instance – and it leads us to profound insights about the nature of human relationships.
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The Mitzvah of Circumcision
Nov 11, 2000 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
Parashat Lekh L’kha is the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and, by extension, with all future Israelite generations. The climax of this story is the mitzvah of circumcision. Few mitzvot in our tradition have elicited the enduring commitment and unwavering observance of the majority of our people as has the ritual of circumcision. Few mitzvot have yielded the intensity of emotion and fascination which pervades any brit milah.
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The Seventy Bulls of Sukkot
Oct 14, 2000 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
Sukkot is the most joyous and universal of the three harvest festivals ordained by the Torah. It marks the end of the agricultural year as well as the summer harvest, and we are explicitly instructed by the Torah to rejoice with our family and community (Deuteronomy 16:17). In that spirit, the Rabbis turned the common noun, hag (festival), into the proper name of the holiday, he-Hag (the festival par excellence). They also designated Sukkot as “the season of our joy” in the prayers for the festival.
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Angel Analysis
Feb 3, 2001 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Bo | Pesah
The Passover seder song, Had Gadya, is sung to a merry little tune that belies the violent content. Why this song is sung at Passover is the subject of varying interpretations, but one connection seems clear: malakh ha-mavet, the angel of death. After all wasn’t it the angel of death that slew the first-born of Egypt? Actually, it was not.
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The Folly of Faith in Military Strength
Feb 10, 2001 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beshallah
Though separated by centuries, this week’s parasha and haftara overlap thematically. In each case, ancient Israel, aided by the forces of nature, prevails over a mighty enemy equipped with the most fearsome weapon of the day, the chariot. Pharaoh pursues the horde of Israelites departing Egypt with every chariot at his command, including his elite corps of 600. Drawn by two horses, each one of these swift vehicles was manned by a driver, warrior and officer. Clearly, Pharaoh intended to cow his just freed slaves into returning to Egypt without a struggle (Exodus 14:6-7).
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