The Politics of Revelation
Only in Judaism was God’s self-disclosure not to an individual or a group (the elders) but to an entire nation.
Looking Up
A fundamental principle of leadership is being taught here.
Education: the Key to Success
Moses did not speak about today or tomorrow. He spoke about the distant future.
Overcoming Setbacks
We sense the pressure Moses is under.
Six Heroic Women
six heroines, six courageous women without whom there would not have been a Moses.
Generations Forget and Remember
It is not difficult to understand the care Joseph took to ensure that Jacob would bless the firstborn first.
The Unexpected Leader
The family had reached deadlock.
The Power of Dreams
Joseph may have known ancient Egyptian traditions about seven-year famines.
Beginning The Journey
The purchase of the Cave of Machpelah is evidently a highly significant event because it is recorded in great detail.
The Courage Not To Conform
Leaders lead. They don’t conform for the sake of conforming. They don’t do what others do merely because others are doing it. They think outside the box. They march to a different tune.
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?
Moses: the Heroic Model
It was Moses who mediated with God.
The Torah as G-d’s Song
The Torah scroll is the nearest Judaism comes to endowing a physical entity with sanctity.
A Sense of History
The ancients saw the gods in nature, never more so than in thinking about the harvest and all that accompanied it.
The Parameters Of Justice
Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers -- how is that compatible with the idea that children may suffer for the sins of their parents?
Testing And Prophecy
On the face of it, the test is simple: if what the prophet predicts comes to pass, he is a true prophet; if not, not. Clearly, though, it was not that simple.
How to Give
These stories all have to do with the mitzvah of tzedakah whose source is in this week’s parshah.
Greatness Is Humility
One of the more unusual aspects of being a chief rabbi is that one comes to know people one otherwise might not.
Philosophy or Prophecy
The biblical covenant has the same literary structure as ancient near eastern political treaties.
Justice And Compassion
Shakespeare is expressing the medieval stereotype of Christian mercy (Portia) as against Jewish justice (Shylock).
Korach: Power Vs. Influence
For the first and only time, Moses invokes a miracle to prove the authenticity of his mission
The Hidden Spirituality Of Tzitzit
This week’s sedrah, Shelach Lecha, ends with one of the great commands of Judaism – tzitzit, the fringes we wear on the corner of our garments as a perennial reminder of our identity as Jews and our obligation to keep the Torah’s commands.
Leadership Beyond Despair
Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, is remarkable for the extreme realism with which it portrays human character. Its heroes are not superhuman. Its non-heroes are not archetypal villains. The best have failings; the worst often have saving virtues. I know of no other religious literature quite like it.
Torah As A Marriage Contract
On the face of it, the connections between the sedrah and haftarah of Bamidbar are slender. The first has to do with demography. Bamidbar begins with a census of the people. The haftarah begins with Hosea’s vision of a time when “the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or numbered.” There was a time when the Israelites could be counted; the day will come when they will be countless. That is one contrast between the future and the past.
The Faith Of The Remarkable Nation
In its account of the festivals of the Jewish year, this week’s parshah, Parshat Emor, contains the following statement: “You shall dwell in thatched huts for seven days. Everyone included in Israel must live in such thatched huts. This is so that future generations will know that I caused the Israelites to live in sukkot when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your G-d.”
Of Love And Hate
At the center of the mosaic books is Vayikra. At the center of Vayikra is the “holiness code” (chapter 19) with its momentous call: “You shall be holy because I, the Lord your G-d, am holy.” And at the centre of chapter 19 is a brief paragraph which, by its positioning, is the apex, the high point, of the Torah:
Reconciliation vs. Vengeance
Judaism is less a philosophical system than a field of tensions – between universalism and particularism, for example, or exile and redemption, priests and prophets, cyclical and linear time, and so on.
Two Types Of Community
A long drama had taken place. Moses had led the people from slavery to the beginning of the road to freedom. The people themselves had witnessed G-d at Mount Sinai, the only time in all history when an entire people became the recipients of revelation. Then came the disappearance of Moses for his long sojourn at the top of the mountain, an absence which led to the Israelites’ greatest collective sin, the making of the Golden Calf. Moses returned to the mountain to plead for forgiveness, which was granted.
The Two Awakenings
Framing the epic events of this week’s sedrah are two objects: the two sets of tablets – the first given before, and the second after, the sin of the Golden Calf. Of the first, we read:
“The tablets were the work of G-d; the writing was the writing of G-d, engraved on the tablets.”
Building Builders
As soon as we read the opening lines of Terumah we begin the massive shift from the intense drama of the exodus with its signs and wonders and epic events, to the long, detailed narrative of how the Israelites constructed the Mishkan.