Entering the Promised Land
Oct 1, 2011 By Ofra Arieli Backenroth | Commentary | Ha'azinu
What does it mean to be a leader who, for 40 long years, led the people of Israel in the desert, providing for all their needs, and, in the end, was forbidden to enter the Promised Land?
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The Gift of Anxiety and Dread
Oct 8, 2011 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Yom Kippur
About a year ago, I had a conversation with a friend in which he described the way he had experienced his life to that point. He said it felt as if he were a passenger on a train, and that being on a train meant there was a set destination and stops along the way, and absolutely no deviation from the proscribed course. It wasn’t that he was unhappy with the direction; it wasn’t that he regretted any stop he had made along the way. What bothered him was a particular moment of realization: he wasn’t sure what was driving the engines or even if he wanted to continue on that particular track.
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Work Transforming into Joy
Oct 14, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Sukkot
In my mind’s eye, I maintain quite an idealized image of Sukkot. I imagine a beautiful sukkah, resting on a lush green lawn, surrounded by trees not quite yet at the peak of autumn. I sit with my family and friends, leisurely enjoying a delicious meal (which appears magically, costs nothing, and requires no cleanup), under a radiant blue sky during the day and a glittering canopy of stars at night. The tension between ideal and real: exactly where we should be, four days after Yom Kippur.
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The Universal and Particular Nature of Creation
Oct 22, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Bereishit
Shortly after Rosh Hashanah this year, Jewish extremists torched a mosque in an Arab-Israeli village in the Galilee, damaging the building and destroying its holy books. Two days later, a rabbinic statement condemning this desecration of a house of worship on Israeli soil garnered the signatures of more than a thousand rabbis of all denominations within 36 hours of the document’s publication. One of my former 91快播 classmates, however, explained with great disappointment why he did not add his name to this effort.
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A Sabbath Song for Parashat Noah
Oct 29, 2011 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Noah
It is a lovely Jewish practice to sing songs at the Shabbat table. The little booklets that contain grace also provide the words of many zemirot, Sabbath songs. If we look at two of the more popular ones, Yah Ribbon and Mah Yedidot Menuhatekh, we find that their common theme is a plea to observe the Sabbath in the present, and a hope for a future in which God redeems the People Israel. But there is one song that differs from all the rest. It makes reference to this week’s Parashat No路ah. The name of the song is “The Dove Found a Place to Rest on the Sabbath (Yonah Maz’ah Bo Manoah).”
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The Redeeming of Captives
Nov 5, 2011 By Eliezer B. Diamond z”l | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
What does it mean to be someone’s brother or sister, beyond a biological fact? In Genesis, the answer seems to be: not much. Every story involving brothers is one of violence, discord, enmity, or deceit. Cain murders Abel; Ham shames his father and is doomed to serve his brothers. Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers鈥攚e all know how those relationships played out. In fact, the only brother who comes to his brother’s aid is not actually his brother: it is Abraham鈥攖hen Abram鈥攚ho rides to the rescue of his nephew Lot.
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Going Toward the Present
Nov 11, 2011 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Vayera
Martin Buber, the great 20th-century Jewish theologian, observed a powerful literary connection between the beginning of Abraham’s life and the end. God first speaks to Abraham suddenly, seemingly without introduction, and commands: “Go forth (lekh lekha) from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). With these few words, God introduces God’s Self to Abraham and it is with these words that their relationship is founded.
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To Speak Is To鈥�
Nov 19, 2011 By Samuel Barth | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah
After the many narratives that explore deeply the life of Abraham and his family, we find in this portion an interlude in which the focus is upon Abraham’s elder servant鈥攏ot named in our text, but often assumed to be Eliezer (mentioned in Gen. 15:2). Eliezer has been charged by Abraham to find a wife for Isaac鈥攏ot from the local (Canaanite) population, but from Aram, the place of Abraham’s birth.
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