How To Choose Life
Aug 31, 2002 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Nitzavim | Vayeilekh | Rosh Hashanah
We stand at an exciting and important time in the Jewish year. We stand less than two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, when so many of us will spend hours in synagogue praying for a good, healthy and fulfilling new year. We stand in a moment of transition, filled with potential. There is so much we can do, so much we can learn, so much we can become.
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A Psalm for Repentance
Aug 28, 2004 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
The Hebrew month of Elul offers us an opportunity to repent. It is an auspicious time granted us each year, during which we can shake off the shackles of our spiritual apathy and seek an engaging and loving path back to ourselves, our fellow human beings, and most importantly, God. One of the traditions prescribed to arouse the feeling of teshuvah, repentance, is the recitation of Psalms.
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Purim Heroines
Mar 18, 2016 By Stefanie B. Siegmund | Commentary | Purim
I did not wear the crown and satiny dress, or stand in line for the beauty pageant. Queen Esther was not a role model I鈥攐r many other children鈥攃ould choose. Later, in the academy, I understood that Esther鈥檚 subterfuge and seduction were the strategies of the weak, the politics of the minority.
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Sea of Repentance
Sep 18, 2010 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Yom Kippur
I can think of no better metaphor than mikveh for God’s role during aseret y’mei teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance that lead up to and include Yom Kippur.
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Seeing the Good
Jul 31, 2004 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Tishah Be'av
On Tishah b’Av, commemorated this past Monday and Tuesday evenings, the Jewish community focuses on the many tragedies which have befallen the Jewish people throughout the ages. This day is of central importance to the Jewish calendar. The Mishnah of tractate Taanit 26a-b lists four events that occurred on the Ninth of Av: the decree that the generation of Israelites that left Egypt could not enter the Land of Israel; the destruction of the First and Second Temples (586 BCE and 70 CE, respectively); the capture and fall of Betar under the Romans (135 CE); and the plowing over of Jerusalem (136 CE).
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Two Paths of Teshuvah
Jul 20, 2002 By Lauren Eichler Berkun | Commentary | Va'et-hannan | Tishah Be'av
This week marks the commemoration of great national calamities in Jewish history. The Torah reading for the morning of Tisha B’Av is a selection from this week’s Torah portion (Deuteronomy 4:25鈥�40). This reading highlights an important aspect of our spiritual response to tragedy.
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Taming the Beast of Extremism
Mar 12, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pekudei | Shabbat Hahodesh | Purim
Bred in the hothouse of militant Orthodox Zionism, Dr. Baruch Goldstein knew the sacred texts of Judaism. His premeditated murder of dozens of Palestinian men kneeling in prayer in the Hebron mosque on the Friday of Purim was clearly triggered by the scriptural readings of the festival. On the sabbath before, Shabbat Zakhor, he had heard in the synagogue once again the ancient injunction never to forget what Amalek did to Israel in the wilderness (Deut. 25:17-19). The haftarah for the day (I Sam. 15) vividly recalls the failure of Saul, Israel’s first king, to follow up his victory over Amalek with total destruction. His indecision in the face of popular demand for the spoils of war cost him God’s confidence and eventually his throne. The imprecation of the prophet Samuel as he belatedly executed Agag, Amalek’s captured king, must have continued to ring in Goldstein’s ear: “As your sword has bereaved women, so shall your mother be bereaved among women (15:33).”
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Rachel’s Tears
May 10, 2003 By Melissa Crespy | Commentary | Emor | Yom Hazikaron-Yom Ha'atzma'ut
It is hard not to be moved by the verses in our parashah which say that when a sheep or goat is born, it shall stay seven days with its mother, and that “no animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day as its young.” (Leviticus 22:28) Though few of us are close to sheep or goats, we are sensitized to the feelings of animals from our loving relationships with our pets, and we feel the sensitivity the Torah holds for the sheep and goats, even though they are destined to become food for humans or sacrifices for God.
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