Toward the end of this week’s parshah Rashi quotes a Medrash that relates the familiar episode of when Avraham Avinu was thrown into a furnace. Rashi recounts that Avraham’s father, Terach, had reported to Nimrod that his son had broken all of his idols. Avraham was then thrown into a fire and was saved. The wording of the Medrash, however, is that Avraham had gone into the fire by himself (kesheyarad Avraham letoch kivshan ha’eish – when Avraham went into the fire, and in another place it says that Nimrod decreed that he should leireid lekivshan ha’eish – go down into the fire).

Several Acharonim were bothered by this event. First, they ask how Avraham could have thrown himself into a fire. Although avodah zarah is one of the three aveiros for which one must sacrifice his or her life instead of transgressing – in addition, when one is forced to perform any aveirah in public before 10 or more people, the person’s life must be given up instead of committing a transgression – there is nevertheless a dispute among the Rishonim as to whether one may actively kill himself or only allow himself to be killed. Second, the Acharonim ask that since bnei Noach are not commanded in Kiddush Hashem, if a ben Noach is forced to transgress he should do so and not give up his life.

Earlier in the parshah the Torah commanded Noach that although animals may now be killed humans may not be killed. The pasuk says: “v’ach es dimchem lenafshoseichem edrosh – but the blood of your souls I will seek.” Rashi brings the drasha that this is the source in the Torah that one may not kill oneself. The Das Zekeinim Miba’alei Tosafos quote an ambiguous Medrash and offer two interpretations of that Medrash that differ on this point. The Medrash makes a drasha that teaches us whether we should or should not be like Chananya Mishael and Azarya, and whether Shaul Hamelech – who killed himself before he would have been captured – acted correctly, for as the pasuk here says: ach, to exclude. One opinion says that the Medrash teaches us that one may kill oneself or others to prevent avodah zarah. The other opinion says that one may only allow himself to be killed; one may never kill to prevent avodah zarah.

Tosafos continues by saying that in his time there was a decree against the Jews (one of the crusades), and that one rabbi was slaughtering little children in an effort to prevent them from growing up in the church. Another rabbi, angered with this practice, called the first rabbi a murderer and said that if he is correct, the first rabbi will die a strange death. Indeed, the first rabbi was captured and given a strange death. In short order, the decree was abolished.

The Gemara in Avodah Zarah 18a says that when Rabbi Chanina ben Tiradyon was being killed, his students asked him to open his mouth so he would die faster. He responded that he could not do this since that would be considered as if he was killing himself. The Ritvah, on that Gemara and quoting the same Medrash, says that Rabbeinu Tam ruled that one is permitted to take his own life under such circumstances.

Returning to the original question, it is possible that Avraham did not go into the fire himself but rather allowed himself to be thrown into the fire – as seems to be the case from Rashi’s wording. Thus, in that event, the first question is not applicable. But if we understand the events as the Medrash implies, we must then explain the opinion that one may never kill oneself (in this case, that Avraham went into the fire on his own). Additionally, even if we understand that he was thrown into the fire we must still explain that if he had the status of a ben Noach, he should have transgressed and not allowed himself to be killed.

The Maharimt suggests that since Avraham Avinu, as a ben Noach, should have transgressed and not be killed, he acted incorrectly by allowing himself to be killed. He says that it is for this reason that the Medrash says that Avraham was saved in the zechus of Yaakov Avinu.

While senior Haredi rabbis are intensifying their battle against smartphones, and have begun as of late to levy personal sanctions against people using these devices, ostensibly to isolate them so they cannot inflict their cultural/spiritual damage on society – one notable and extremely influential Haredi star, Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak, continues to use this dangerous device unheeded.

Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak claims that Torah sage Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman granted him and his assistants special permission to use the iPhone “for the purpose of hachzara b’tshuva,” encouraging people to return to observance of Torah & mitzvot.

Of all the people I disagree with ideologically, Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak is by far my favorite. When I’m feeling down I go to You Tube and pick a clip of his at random and let it run for thirty minutes or so. For me, it cures the blues. Because the good rabbi never cowers before anyone, and if he thinks he’s right he is visibly happy to let out the most unpopular statements, if only to watch the heads of his detractors explode with frustration.

One of his favorite sports is to pick up off the cuff debates with people in his audience, many of whom come specifically to duke it out with him. Not all of them pose much of an intellectual challenge, but I’m sure the outspoken rabbi can hold his own against anyone.

So I was curious to read his reaction to the allegations regarding his use of the verboten instruments, after social media users and several websites publicized pictures of him with the little box that made Steve Jobs king.

Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak addressed the issue on his own website, “Shofar,” calling his critics “fools” and saying they insult God.

He cited our sages, who warned that “anyone who doubts his rabbi, it is as if he is doubts the Divine Presence.” He then added another warning, citing the sages who taught that “he who casts suspicion upon the innocent will receive bodily punishment.”

Referring to the topic at hand, Rabbi Yitzchak published an ad on his website titled “Clarification to Eliminate Stumbling Blocks and Slander,” with the explanation: “Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak is against the iPhone and similar devices. Regarding the question of stupid and uninformed individuals, who ask how come Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak uses an iPhone, let it be known that the eminent Torah sage Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman gave personal permission to the rabbi and to his staff to use iPhones for the purpose of bringing Jews back to Torah observance.”

Last week, Rabbi Moshe Tzadka, dean of Yeshivat Porat Yosef, gave an order to smash the smartphone belonging to one of the boys in the yeshiva. Before breaking the phone, Rabbi Tzadka remarked that this is fulfilling the commandment of sanctifying God’s name and the act of destroying the device is like the Torah passage referring to idol worship: “And their altars you shall shatter and their monuments shall be broken.”

After the owner of the phone broke it in two pieces with his own hands, the rabbi called upon all present to declaim the passage together with him, “So shall all your enemies be smitten, God.”

An “iPhone smashing” ceremony was held several weeks ago, in the Maayan Shalom synagogue in the Pardes Katz neighborhood of Bnei Brak, where another smartphone was smashed to pieces. Presiding over that ceremony was Rabbi Lior Glazer (the Magid Meisharim) who peppered his words of rebuke with loud pounding of a wooden gavel, and called the religious users of the various “impure” smartphone devices despicable, villainous abominations.

The anti-smartphone forces in the Haredi world compare it to something like a house of ill repute right inside your pocket. But, much like the folks over at Chabad.org, Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak has devoted his life to loading positive, God fearing and extremely enjoyable messages online.

Which is why the “Shofar” website, that serves as an enormous archive of Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak’s articles and videos, also celebrates the fact that from now on subscribers to the website as well as free users (for a limited time only) will be able to get pocket versions of the rabbi’s wisdom.

“With mazal tov, we’re on our way: the Rabbi in every pocket. You can watch the films of the Rabbi, may he live long, on iPhone and iPad as an application in the new website under the category of Edited Films. Enjoy!”

Deborah Pinto, wife of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto, who is suspected, along with her husband, of trying to bribe a senior police officer, attempted suicide on Sunday by taking pills. Mrs. Pinto, who was picked up for questioning last Thursday, together with her husband, and was released with him under restrictive conditions, is in satisfactory condition at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Walla reported.

Rabbi Pinto released a statement saying: “We pray for the well being of the Rebbetzin along with thousands of followers. Our attorneys warned the authorities about her condition. Unfortunately, they did not show here the required sensitivity. We are certain that she will recover soon and say what she has to say to the investigators, until all of them understand that there was nothing wrong with her behavior and that a great injustice has been done.”

At the end of his interrogation today, Rabbi Pinto was taken to the hospital, where he is staying by his wife’s bed. He received a special suspension of his house arrest so he can be with his wife. Many associates and family members have arrived at the hospital.

The investigation against Rabbi Pinto and his wife began a few weeks ago, after Pinto allegedly offered the chief of the police investigations division chief, Brigadier General Bracha, hundreds of thousands of shekels in return for details of an ongoing police investigation. The officer reported the offer to the head of the Investigations Department, General Yoav Segalovitch, who sent Bracha back to gather evidence against the rabbi. When he became convinced an investigation was called for, Segalovitch appointed a special investigation team to handle the sensitive case.

Rabbi Pinto and his wife returned last Thursday from the U.S. and the moment they landed were taken for questioning in the city of Ramla, where investigators told them of the bribe allegations against them. In addition, police are considering charges of money laundering against the rabbi and his wife. They couple have both denied the allegations.

At the end of the investigation, they were taken to a hearing before a judge, where police asked that they be released under restrictive conditions—house arrest—as well as post bail of 1 million shekel each and be forbidden to leave the country for six months.

Rabbi Josiah Pinto is considered the spiritual leader of prominent Jewish businessmen in Israel and around the world. In recent years, many business leaders have been making pilgrimages to Rabbi Pinto’s house, and accompany him on his annual journey to the grave of Rabbi Eliezer Papo (1785–1828, author of Pele Yoetz, a manuscript on ethical behavior) in Bulgaria.

Among those tied to the rabbi, are Shari Arison, Nochi Dankner, Jacky Ben-Zaken and Ilan Ben Dov.

Rabbi Pinto, who began his career in Ashdod, now divides his time between Israel and Manhattan, where he mentors a large community of Jewish businessmen. He counsels businessmen before they make major transactions, and in many cases serves as an arbitrator in financial disputes. Last June, Israel Forbes magazine estimated Rabbi Pinto’s fortune at $75 million.

It is the most famous, majestic and influential opening of any book in literature: “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” What is surpassingly strange is the way Rashi – most beloved of all Jewish commentators – begins his commentary:

Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah should have begun with the verse (Exodus 12:1): “This month shall be to you the first of the months,” which was the first commandment given to Israel.

Can we really take this at face value? Did Rabbi Isaac, or for that matter Rashi, seriously suggest that the Book of books might have begun in the middle – a third of the way into Exodus? That it might have passed by in silence the creation of the universe – which is, after all, one of the fundamentals of Jewish faith?

Could we understand the history of Israel without its prehistory, the stories of Abraham and Sarah and their children? Could we have understood those narratives without knowing what preceded them: G-d’s repeated disappointment with Adam and Eve, Cain, the generation of the Flood and the builders of the Tower of Babel?

The fifty chapters of Genesis, together with the opening of Exodus, are the source book of biblical faith. They are as near as we get to an exposition of the philosophy of Judaism. What then did Rabbi Isaac mean?

He meant something profound, which we often forget. To understand a book, we need to know to what genre it belongs. Is it history or legend, chronicle or myth? To what question is it an answer? A history book answers the question: what happened? A book of cosmology – be it science or myth – answers the question: how did it happen?

What Rabbi Isaac is telling us is that if we seek to understand the Torah, we must read it as Torah, which is to say: law, instruction, teaching, guidance. Torah is an answer to the question: how shall we live? That is why he raises the question as to why it does not begin with the first command given to Israel.

Torah is not a book of history, even though it includes history. It is not a book of science, even though the first chapter of Genesis – as the 19th-century sociologist Max Weber pointed out – is the necessary prelude to science, because it represents the first time people saw the universe as the product of a single creative will, and therefore as intelligible rather than capricious and mysterious. It is, first and last, a book about how to live. Everything it contains – not only commandments but also narratives, including the narrative of creation itself – is there solely for the sake of ethical and spiritual instruction.

It moves from the minutest details to the most majestic visions of the universe and our place within it. But it never deviates from its intense focus on the questions: What shall I do? How shall I live? What kind of person should I strive to become? It begins, in Genesis 1, with the most fundamental question of all. As the Psalm (8:4) puts it: “What is man that You are mindful of him?”

Pico della Mirandola’s 15th century Oration on Man was one of the turning points of Western civilization, the “manifesto” of the Italian Renaissance. In it he attributed the following declaration to G-d, addressing the first man:

“We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgment and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature.

“I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.”

Some 30 years ago a certain well-known rabbi in Manhattan came to Israel and brought much of his congregation with him, to a barren ridge where our forefathers and foremothers traveled to and from Jerusalem and Hebron. The rabbi and his followers left the ravages of assimilation and headed to the unknown. The rabbi swiftly gathered in Jews from all over the world and all over Israel to the cozy town of Efrat.

My son’s Efrat high school class recently returned from a weeklong trip to Poland. We met them at dawn at the Kotel. How appropriate to have gone during the month of Elul.

In order to be thoroughly understood, this is a story that must be rewound and fast-forwarded. We move back and forth between Biblical times, times of bitterness, exile, enslavement, times of the Kings – so many yesterdays. At the Kotel we are rewarded by a scene featuring a group of the proudest Jewish souls on the planet who, until this time, never really experienced anti-Semitism. This is a story about 16- and 17-year-old “caped crusaders” who wore huge Israeli flags draped around their shoulders at the death camps, the remains of shtetls, the memorials. They are not afraid to dance and cry in public. They have returned from what they describe as a cemetery the size of an entire country.

We rewind several days to watch them recite Kaddish along the train tracks, where the generations of their grandparents, people with the same names, once tread for the last time. And now fast-forward again to the free Jews dancing at the Kotel. From what are they free? From the threat of intermarriage and the burdens of being in the minority. They are free from having to look over their shoulders both to the past and the future and wondering what others might think. They are free to proudly wear the mantle of Heaven.

What is the antonym of “cowering”? At the Kotel, after a week of first-hand testimony of slave labor, brutality, murder, loss and ovens the powerful antidote is this: the Jewish melting pot, on Jewish land. Here is where the children of Manhattan congregants gather together with the children of Jews who feared Arab marauders, together with grandchildren of Jews who were slaves all over the world, Jews who wandered and prayed in all manners of exile – out of fear.

With their arms around each other’s shoulders, the boys dance in a giant circle, in the plaza in front of the Kotel. They sing a new song, one their teacher originated with the words, “Wherever we go, we are going to the Land of Israel.” At this tearfully joyful reunion, the parents are laughing and crying as well.

We ignore the piercing wails of the muezzin calling Muslim followers to prayer. This is the meaning of the words about the children returning to the borders: “v’shavu banim ligvulam.”

Dear Sarah,

You have grown political as of late, and your politics have traction. Your YouTube video “Let My People Vote” has been viewed more than 1.4 million times. You have 3.4 million Twitter followers apparently eager to consume your mix of sexual references and political barbs.

I wouldn’t be writing these words had your most recent video not been framed in biblical language. Its title held deep significance to me, as I am sure was your intention.

Your name is Silverman. My name is Rosenblatt. We both have Jewish ancestors; I am not sure what else we share. You are good at what you do – comedy – and I try to be good at what I do – being a husband, dad, rabbi, and manufacturer of kosher meat. My wife and I are blessed with six children and my day is spent earning for the brood.

You stand out among comedians because your comedy is sharper than theirs. It is crude and clever, simple and punishing; your perception of the human condition is acute, which is why your punch lines bite deeper and hurt longer. You have a knack for finding faults and inconsistencies in people and blowing them wide open with carefully plotted language and cleverly nuanced pauses.

If I were to be gratuitous, I would say you mock what is imperfect because you know what perfect should look like and you seek the ultimate perfection.

But I won’t be so gratuitous. You are in show biz. I am in the rabbi biz. You entertain people. I serve people. I believe I have your number. You will soon turn 42 and your destiny, as you stated, will not include children. You blame it on your depression, saying you don’t want to pass it on to another generation.

I find that confusing, coming from someone as perceptive as you are in dissecting flawed arguments. Surely you appreciate being alive and surely, if the wonder of your womb were afflicted with your weaknesses and blessed with your strengths, it would be happy to be alive, too.

You said you wouldn’t get married until gay people can. Now they can. And you still haven’t married. I think, Sarah, that marriage and childrearing are not in the cards for you because you can’t focus on building life when you spend your days and nights tearing it down.

You have made a career making public that which is private, making crude that which is intimate, making sensual that which is spiritual. You have experienced what traditional Judaism taught long ago: when you make sex a public thing it loses its potency. When the whisper is replaced with a shout there is no magic to speak about. And, in my opinion, Sarah, that is why you have had trouble forging a permanent relationship – the most basic desire of the feminine soul.

Human beings have many acquaintances and fewer friends, but only one spouse. Judaism celebrates the monogamous, intimate relationship with a spouse as the prototype of the intimate relationship with God. Marriage, in Judaism, is holy. Family, in Judaism, is celebrated. But for you, nothing is holy; in your world, nothing is permanent. Your ideology is secular. Your culture may be Jewish, but your mind is not.

I think you have latched on to politics because you are searching for something to build. There is only so much pulling down one can do without feeling utterly destructive. You want to fight for a value so you take your belief – secularism – and promote it. As an Orthodox rabbi, I disagree with just about everything you say, but respect your right to say it. All I ask, respectfully, is that you not use traditional Jewish terminology in your efforts. Because doing so is a lie.

Nothing you say or stand for, Sarah, from your sickening sexual proposal to a Republican donor to your equally vulgar tweet to Mitt Romney, has the slightest thing to do with the most basic of tenets which Judaism has taught the world – that the monogamous relationship is the most meaningful one and that a happy marriage is the key to wholesomeness.

You are driven. You are passionate. I pray that you channel your drive and direct your passion to something positive, something that will make you a better and more positive person, something that will allow you to touch eternity and truly impact the world forever. I pray that you pursue marriage and, if you are so blessed, raise children.

Police in Israel have reportedly arrested a rabbi suspected of stealing seven Torah scrolls from the synagogue of Moshav Brosh near Be’er Sheva.

Kikar HaShabat reported that on Oct. 10 police requested that the Be’er Sheva Magistrate’s Court remand the suspect for a further 24 hours. He had been arrested the previous day, the news site reported.

According to police, the anonymous rabbi has already confessed to taking seven Torah scrolls from the synagogue.

The alleged theft was discovered on Simchat Torah, Oct. 8, atime when all the stored Torah scrolls are taken out for the hakafot ceremonies, as individuals carry them and dance with them in a circle.

As the Brosh synagogue one worshiper opened the ark, after his boy asked to see the sheepskin on which the Torah is written, and they discovered blank poster-board sheets which had been put there in place of the Torahs.

Mordechai Deri, a regular member of the synagogue, Ma’ariv that he inspected all other seven Torah scrolls and found they had been replaced, too.

“It was horrible,” he said.

Deri then related that the suspect approached him, saying, “Mordechai, talk to your son, tell him not to make a big deal out of this. I only took the Torah scroll to fix it and tomorrow I’ll bring it back.”

The day after, when worshippers sought to figure out the extent of the damage, they realized that seven scrolls had been stolen altogether.

JTA contributed to this report

Yom Kipper, the Day of Atonement, is the supreme moment of Jewish time, a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment. At no other time are we so sharply conscious of standing before God, of being known by Him. But it begins in the strangest of ways.

Kol Nidre, the prayer that heralds the evening service and the beginning of the sanctity of the day, is the key that unlocks the Jewish heart. Its melody is haunting. As the cantor sings, we hear in that ancient tune the deepest music of the Jewish soul, elegiac yet striving, pained but resolute, the song of those who knew that to believe is to suffer and still to hope, the music of our ancestors that stretches out to us from the past and enfolds us in its cadences, making us and them one. The music is sublime. Tolstoy called it a melody that “echoes the story of the great martyrdom of a grief-stricken nation.” Beethoven came close to it in the most otherworldly and austere of his compositions, the sixth movement of the C Sharp Minor Quartet, opus 131. The music is pure poetry but the words are prosaic prose.

Kol Nidre means “all vows.” The passage itself is not a prayer at all, but a dry legal formula annulling in advance all vows, oaths and promises between us and God in the coming year. Nothing could be more incongruous, less apparently in keeping with the solemnity of the day. Indeed, for more than a thousand years there have been attempts to remove it from the liturgy. Why annul vows? Better, as the Hebrew Bible and the rabbis argued, not to make them in the first place if they could not be kept. Besides, though Jewish law admits the possibility of annulment, it does so only after patient examination of individual cases. To do so globally for the whole community was difficult to justify.

From the eighth century onwards we read of gaonim, rabbinic leaders, who condemned the prayer and sought to have it abolished. Five centuries later a new note of concern was added. In the Christian-Jewish disputation in Paris in 1240, the Christian protagonist Nicholas Donin attacked Kol Nidre as evidence that Jews did not feel themselves bound by their word, a claim later repeated by anti-Semitic writers. In vain, Jews explained that the prayer had nothing to do with promises between man and man. It referred only to private commitments between man and God. All in all, it was and is a strange way to begin the holiest of days.

Yet the prayer survived all attempts to have it dislodged. One theory, advanced by Joseph Bloch in I917 and adopted by Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, is that it had its origins in the forced conversion of Spanish Jews to Christianity under the Visigoths in the seventh century. These Jews, the first Marranos, publicly abandoned their faith rather than face torture and death, but they remained Jews in secret. On the Day of Atonement they made their way back to the synagogue and prayed to have their vow of conversion annulled. Certainly some such reason lies behind the declaration immediately prior to Kol Nidre in which the leaders of prayer solemnly grant permission “by the authority of the heavenly and earthly court” for “transgressors” to join the congregation in prayer. This was a lifting of the ban of excommunication against Jews who, during the year, had been declared to have placed themselves outside the community. That, surely, is the significance of Kol Nidre in the Jewish imagination. It is the moment when the doors of belonging are opened, and when those who have been estranged return.

The Hebrew word teshuvah, usually translated as “penitence,” in fact means something else: returning, retracing our steps, coming home. It belongs to the biblical vision in which sin means dislocation, and punishment is exile: Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden, Israel’s exile from its land. A sin is an act that does not belong, one that transgresses the moral boundaries of the world. One who acts in ways that do not belong eventually finds that he does not belong. Increasingly he places himself outside the relationships – of family, community and of being at one with history – that make him who he is. The most characteristic sense of sin is less one of guilt than of being lost. Teshuvah means finding your way back home again.