Finding Peace at Home and Abroad
Jan 10, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayehi
Sometimes the point of a passage hinges on what is missing rather than on what is said. I find this to be the case in the final exchange between Joseph and his brothers. The family has just returned to Egypt after burying Jacob in the cave of Machpelah in Hebron, and the brothers are overcome with fear of Joseph’s intentions. With their father gone, might Joseph now seek to punish them for what they had done to him years before? Was it only Jacob’s presence that had stayed his vengeful hand? The Torah uncharacteristically tells us what ran through their minds: “When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong that we did him!’ (Genesis 50:15)”
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Uniting the Jewish People
Dec 20, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayeshev
This week I will leave for Israel to attend the World Zionist Congress along with 37 other delegates from MERCAZ, the official Zionist party of the Conservative Movement in the United States. Despite the overblown rhetoric that will be heard in Jerusalem, no one should imagine that this Congress is a matter of any consequence. Zionism is alive and well, but the World Zionist Organization died a long time ago. In Jewish life we simply can’t muster the political will to dismantle organizational structures designed for a specific purpose after they have been crowned with success.
Read MoreA Wounded Leader
Dec 13, 1997 By Allan Kensky | Commentary | Vayishlah
For the past nine years, one of my assignments in the Rabbinical School has been to lead a year long, twice-weekly seminar in professional and spiritual development for our first year students. Our overarching theme for the year is the life-cycle of the Jew. We discuss and examine the major life-cycle rituals. We explore some of the larger societal issues of each turning point in the life-cycle with an eye towards their impact on the individual and their challenge to the contemporary rabbi. Students study rabbinic sources and halakhic texts on the life-cycle, gradually integrating these texts into their emerging rabbinic personality.
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The Importance of Educating Our Children
Dec 6, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei
When Abraham instructed his servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac back in the old country, and only there, he stipulated twice that Isaac himself was never to return. He was to stay in Canaan, but not to marry any of its native women. Yet a generation later, we find caution thrown to the winds. Jacob retraces his grandfather’s steps to Paddan-aram, from where he hailed.
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Mourning a Sister
Nov 29, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Toledot
The Shiva is over. I have reentered the world emotionally drained and self-absorbed. My sister, my only sibling, was also my friend. We shared so much of our adult lives. My wife and I were married in her home. Her first husband, an obstetrician for whom the practice of medicine was his calling, delivered our three children. Their spacious and relaxed home in Vineland, New Jersey provided us a refuge full of love, companionship and good conversation. We traveled together, mourned together and always celebrated the Passover sedarim together.
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Faith in Israel’s Destiny
Nov 22, 1997 By Morton M. Leifman z”l | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah
This week’s Torah portion, Haye Sarah, provides us with yet another ancient episode that eventually contributed to the molding of the mythic consciousness of our people in a profound way. It begins with the death of Sarah and continues on with a lengthy description of the legal and business arrangements necessary for Abraham’s acquisition of land for Sarah’s burial. Abraham’s status in the land of Canaan is that of ger v’toshav, a resident alien, and though a man of great substance, even a person of renown, one honored in the community, his legal status required that he obtain special permission both from the owner of the land and from the community as a whole to buy and to own property. Members of the native clans were reluctant to confer full rights even to resident aliens 鈥� especially the right to land ownership which conceivably might deplete the holdings of the progeny of those currently blessed with political control.
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Giving Women a Voice
Nov 7, 1997 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Vayera
I did not celebrate my bat mitzvah on parashat Vayera; in fact, I never celebrated it at all. My birthday on 19 Heshvan gives me, as a legitimate birthright, permission to indulge in constant grappling with this incredibly rich and complex text. Yet I have never voiced that connection with a proper celebration of my Jewish coming of age.
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Abraham’s Landsmann
Nov 7, 1997 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
I was honored when Chancellor Schorsch asked me to fill in for him and write a d’var torah on Parashat Lech Lecha, because for this one week each year he and I are Landsmann. The word, in German or Yiddish, denotes compatriots, fellow countrymen. My own family ancestry traces back to Byelorussia, my grandparents hailing from Minsk and Pinsk. The Chancellor comes, as his readers surely know, from Germany. But each of us share a patrimony in this week’s Torah reading, for Parashat Lech Lecha was the bar mitzvah portion each of us chanted in our respective congregations all those many years ago.
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