The Future Of The Past

Joseph is helping his brothers to revise their memory of the past. In doing so, he is challenging one of our most fundamental assumptions about time, namely its asymmetry. We can change the future. We cannot change the past. But is that entirely true?

Who Is Honored?

In parshat Tetzaveh, for once Moses, the hero, the leader, the liberator, the lawgiver, is offstage. Instead our focus is on his elder brother Aaron who, elsewhere, is often in the background.

The Miracle Of A Child

Why the binding? Why put Abraham and Sarah through the agony of thinking that the son for whom they have waited for so long is about to die? We cherish what we wait for and what we most risk losing.

Sukkot’s Uniqueness

In a way not shared by any other festival, Sukkot celebrates the dual nature of Jewish faith: the universality of G-d and the particularity of Jewish existence.

To 120: Growing Old, Staying Young

There is something moving about seeing Moses, at almost 120, looking forward as well as back, sharing his wisdom with the young, teaching us that while the body may age, the spirit can stay young

Making Love Last

A key to help unlock the entire project outlined by Moses in Sefer Devarim, the final book of the Torah, from a most unlikely source...

The Lost Masterpiece: Parshat Pinchas

God was saying, “From My perspective, seeing the future, it would have been better to send women, because they love and cherish the land and would never come to speak negatively about it. However, since you are convinced that these men are worthy and do indeed value the land, I give you permission to go ahead and send them.”

Speaking To Non-Jews About God

Judaism was and remains unique in its combination of universalism and particularism. We believe that God is the God of all humanity. He created all. He is accessible to all. He cares for all. He has made a covenant with all. Yet there is also a relationship with God that is unique to the Jewish people. It alone has placed its national life under His direct sovereignty

Look At The Accuser, Not The Accused

If you seek to understand an accusation, look at the accuser, not the accused. That is the key to the Korach affair and to understanding anti-Semitism.

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles

Neither Abraham nor Sarah had an easy life. They faced trials testing their faith, yet Rashi says Sarah’s years were equal in goodness and the Torah says Abraham had been blessed with everything-Why?

True Conflict Resolution

Heaven answered Moshe dramatically. He was proved right. End of revolt. End of story- Not at all...

Refusing Comfort, Keeping Hope

Jewish history may seem to signify irretrievable loss, a fate that must be accepted. Jews never believed the evidence because they had something else to set against it – a faith, a trust, an unbreakable hope that proved stronger than historical inevitability

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

The Torah is not myth but anti-myth, a deliberate insistence on removing the magical elements from the story and focusing relentlessly on the human drama

The Religious Significance Of Israel

Whatever the subplots and subsidiary themes of the Chumash, its overarching narrative is the promise of and journey to the land. Jewish history begins with Avraham and Sarah’s journey to it. The four subsequent books of the Torah, from Exodus to Deuteronomy, are taken up with the second journey in the days of Moshe.

The Kindness Of Strangers

Providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, assistance to the poor; visiting the sick, comforting mourners and providing a dignified burial for all became constitutive of Jewish life.

When The “I” Is Silent

Simply too many cases of prayers being answered to deny it makes a difference to our fate. It does.

Does Love Conquer All?

Says the Torah: When love is likely to be the cause of conflict, it must take second place to justice.

Sages And Saints

A society takes all types... Shabbat Shalom!

A Sage Is Greater Than A Prophet

What for the prophets was a dazzling vision of a distant future of peace was, for the Sages, a practical program of good community relations.

Restoring Order and Maintaining Peace

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you fail. Such is life.

The Disguises In Genesis

Jacob, Leah, Tamar and Joseph discover that, though they may never win the affection they desire, G-d is with them and that, ultimately, is enough. A disguise hides one from others, but not from G-d

Tackling Tomorrow’s Problems

In her book The Watchman’s Rattle, subtitled Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction, Rebecca Costa delivers a fascinating account of how civilizations die. Their problems become too complex. Societies reach what she calls a cognitive threshold. They simply can’t chart a path from the present to the future.

The Objective Basis For Morality

Is there such a thing as an objective basis of morality? For some time, in secular circles, the idea has seemed absurd. Morality is what we choose it to be. We are free to do what we like so long as we don’t harm others. Moral judgments are not truths but choices. There is no way of getting from “is” to “ought,” from description to prescription, from facts to values, from science to ethics. This was the received wisdom in philosophy for a century after Nietzsche had argued for the abandonment of morality – which he saw as the product of Judaism – in favor of the “will to power.”

Do We Pursue Happiness – Or Joy?

When we focus on the moment, allowing ourselves to dance, sing, and give thanks, when we do things for their own sake not for any other reward, when we let go of our separateness and become a voice in the holy city's choir, then there is joy.

Can There Be Compassion Without Justice?

This is a totally counterintuitive truth: The more we believe that G-d punishes the guilty, the more forgiving we become; the less we believe that G-d punishes the guilty, the more resentful and punitive we become.

The Almighty’s Supreme Call to Man

Could we understand the history of Israel without its prehistory, the stories of Abraham and Sarah and their children?

Vision and Details

Two laws have to do with the Israelites’ experience of being an oppressed minority:

Dressing To Impress

Tetzaveh is also the first time we encounter the phrase “for glory and for splendor,” describing the effect and point of the garments. Until now kavod, “glory,” has been spoken of in relation to G-d alone. Now human beings are to share some of the same glory.

Moving Forward

Joseph had, in double measure, one of the necessary gifts of a leader: the ability to keep going despite opposition, envy, false accusation and repeated setbacks.

The Meanings Of Shema

It would be reasonable to assume that a language that contains the verb “to command” must also contain the verb “to obey.” The one implies the other, just as the concept of a question implies the possibility of an answer. We would, however, be wrong. There are 613 commandments in the Torah, but there is no word in biblical Hebrew that means “to obey.” When Hebrew was revived as a language of everyday speech in the nineteenth century, a word, letsayet, had to be borrowed from Aramaic. Until then there was no Hebrew word for “to obey.”

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