“A Righteous Person Knows the Needs of His Beast.”
Nov 6, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah
This week’s parashah presents us with the first instance of a dating service.
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Making Our Way Through an Imperfect World
Jul 3, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Balak
The story of Balaam, the gentile prophet who came to curse the people of Israel, but stayed to shower them with blessings should not be wholly unfamiliar to us. It is alluded to twice in the liturgy of the daily morning service, once indirectly and once directly.
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Korah: a Rebel with a Cause
Jun 26, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah
In the Jewish imagination, Korah personifies the archrebel. Rapacious envy appears to drive him to assemble a force of 250 “men of repute” to repudiate the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Stunned by the confrontation, Moses is unable to muster any sympathy for Korah. Moses often intercedes with God on behalf of his adversaries. Not this time.
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Overcoming the Past
Jun 12, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shelah Lekha | Rosh Hashanah
This week’s parashah strikes a note that reverberates throughout the liturgy of our High Holy Day services: “I pardon (salahti), as you have asked (14:20).” Prayers for forgiveness (selihot-same word) punctuate the season of introspection from the week before Rosh Hashanah to the end of Yom Kippur. Not surprisingly, this verse from our parashah appears often in these prayers. The concept of atonement enables us to bridge the chasm between divine expectation and human reality. It prevents the perfect from becoming the enemy of the good. For humans, holiness is always a temporary state of being. Without forgiveness, we would find ourselves forever alienated from God.
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A Paradox of Greatness and Humility
Jun 5, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
America does not like wimps. We want our leaders to exude certainty and resolve, vigor and self-confidence. We deem a leader wise when decisive. The image, though, hardly comports with that of scripture. In the portrait of Moses offered up by this week’s parashah, we are treated to a leader conscious of his own fallibility. The Torah does not stress, to the exclusion of all other traits, Moses’ special charisma. True, unlike other prophets, he is on such intimate terms with God that God addresses him at any time of day in unmediated fashion. No need for somnolence and dreams. In reprimanding Aaron and Miriam for their presumption of equality, God affirms Moses’ unique stature: “With him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the likeness of the Lord” (12:8).
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Bialik’s Radical Subversion
May 22, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bemidbar
The overture to the book of Numbers is decidedly upbeat. All appears in order for a quick journey through the wilderness. We are at the start of the fourteenth month since the exodus from Egypt. A month before Moses had erected the Tabernacle, commemorating the first anniversary of Israel’s freedom. Just three months after its redemption, Israel experienced God’s revelation at Mount Sinai. The opening chapters convey an aura of invincibility. With exactly 603,550 fighting men above the age of twenty, Israel is arrayed around the Tabernacle in military formation with four tribes on each side. The ultimate power of this force is spiritual, for the Tabernacle at its center protected by the Levites, is not only the repository of the tablets of the covenant, but also the abode of God on earth. As a shrine, it serves as an earthly microcosm of God’s cosmic dwelling.
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The Past Leading to the Present
Oct 30, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera
The unusual Hebrew phrase “lekh lekha” occurs only twice in the entire Tanakh: at the beginning of last week’s parasha when God instructs Abraham to leave Haran, and this week, when God asks him to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice (Genesis 12:1; 22:2).
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Abraham: Knight of Many Faiths
Oct 23, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
It is hard to reconcile the glaring gap between promise and fulfillment in the story of Abraham.
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