What Is Love?
Oct 1, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Nitzavim
Love is surely a tough emotional state to prescribe by law.
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The Language of the Jewish People
Sep 24, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo
The owner of the mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse we rented for August has a well-tended orchard of diverse fruit trees.
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The Status of Women
Sep 17, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tetzei
At 91快播’s opening barbecue for faculty and their families last week, my son and daughter-in-law told us sheepishly that their fourteenth wedding anniversary had caught them unawares.
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The Responsibility of Holding Office
Sep 10, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shofetim
Rabbi Hananiah, the Deputy High Priest, taught: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if people did not fear it, they would swallow each other alive” (Pirkei Avot 3:2, trans. Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals, 264).
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Vanquishment Through the Written Word
Sep 3, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Re'eh
For a book that purports to be but a reprise of the other books of the Torah, Deuteronomy abounds with puzzling discrepancies.
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Judaism’s Activist Spirit
Aug 27, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Eikev
In his early Zionist tract, Rome and Jerusalem (1862), Moses Hess declaimed “that the Jewish religion is, above all, Jewish patriotism.”
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On Writing Torah Commentaries
Jul 9, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Hukkat
As I begin my twentieth and final year as Chancellor, I am mindful of the cautionary verse from Proverbs, wisely inserted by our sages in the morning liturgy: “Many are the designs of the human heart, but in the end, it is God’s plan that will prevail.”
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The Spiritual Significance of the Sacrificial Cult
Mar 29, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Parah | Tzav
Our Hebrew Scripture is a library of books with many voices, a bracing diversity of literary genres and religious opinions. This is a good week to remind ourselves of that noteworthy fact as we struggle through a double dosage of cultic prescriptions. Our parasha stipulates the tasks incumbent on the priests in administering the sacrifices that ordinary Israelites might offer at the Tabernacle. On top of that, because this Shabbat is the third of the four special Shabbatot leading up to Passover, we are treated to an additional reading dealing with the potion prepared from the ashes of an unblemished red heifer for the purpose of ritual purification.
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