Redeeming Relevance: A People Chosen for Opposition
While there is plenty of room for cooperation and interaction with other larger cultures, it is important for the Jewish people to remember that a key role God wants it to play is to often stand on the other side and follow our own path.
Redeeming Relevance: Forgiving Made Easy
Almost always, the reason we are not willing to forgive offenses against us has almost nothing to do with the offense, and everything to do with it being done to us. Once we can internalize this, we can move to a God’s-eye perspective and forgive others more easily.
Redeeming Relevance: Moshe’s Sober Consolation
And so Moshe’s ultimate message here, according to Netziv, may be that even if the curses are fulfilled, that is no reason to abandon God.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Shoftim: Self-Knowledge is not Self-Understanding
One might think that there's nothing we understand better in the world than ourselves--after all, we spend every waking minute with ourselves. But is this self-understanding really the case?
Redeeming Relevance: When the Torah’s Answer to Good, Bad or Indifferent is Yes, Yes...
In other words, it is not our strength at all that gives us the victory, but the workings of God.
How Should We Listen?…
As if Our Life Depended on it
Redeeming Relevance: How to – and how not to – Challenge the Status Quo
There is an important teaching here for those who seek to have legitimate grievances addressed.
Redeeming Relevance: Chukat: The 38 Year Black Hole
Precisely because the work that the second-generation did take place was less dramatic and required human participation that it created its own more organic resilience, making it a better model
Redeeming Relevance: Shelach: 10+2 Tribes
Why twelve? If what is really important is the number ten, God could have theoretically created anywhere from eleven to nineteen tribes, and we would still have had decision-making with a majority of ten...
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Nasso: Sotah and the Metaphor of Monogamy
I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to suggest that the whole reason God created man, male and female, was for us to better understand our relationship with Him.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Behar: The Plea of a Forsaken Mitzvah
Since the commandments are all meant to engender some positive effect; when a commandment is not practiced, that effect will not be attained either.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Kedoshim: Self-Awareness, Modernity and Holiness
Living at the height of European Romanticism and on the cusp of Nietzsche’s writings – which both contributed to a new much more pronounced interest in the individual – Netziv surely intuited the need to address the legitimate aspects of trends making inroads upon his students.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Shemini: Why there is NO Problem with Collective Punishment
--and Why We Avoid it Nonetheless
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Tzav: The Temple’s Sophistication and the Chumrot of Pesach
Although there is a strong basis for our propensity to be more stringent on Pesach than we are during the rest of the year, we should not turn that into a blanket attitude in which stringency is always followed, regardless of the other values at stake
Redeeming Relevance: Women, Beauty and Religion
The easiest way out of my problem would be to say that the Mishkan was designed based on people’s need to be impressed
Redeeming Relevance: Acting in a World of Doubt
Yet, if Mordechai teaches us that doubt is no reason for inaction, it is Esther that teaches us that it is actually a reason for even more effort
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Mishpatim: The Torah’s Superior Strategy for Brotherly Love
But the Torah was given to real people, for whom love of the outsider would not always be so obvious.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Va’Eira: A Quantitative Approach to Free Will
This story is actually a brilliant depiction of the interplay between divine providence and free will. Without taking away our ability to “surprise Him,” God – when needed – doesn’t hesitate to steer us in the direction He wants.
The Tragedy of When We are both Right
So while a proper reading of the Book of Bereshit introduces us to moral complexity, its end pushes us even further. It prepares us for the fact that there is even a level of moral complexity, which we should realize exists even if we may never understand it
Redeeming Relvance: Parshat Mikets: The Man who Could no Longer Tell a Lie
How Yehudah Turned Bnai Ya’akov into Bnai Yisrael
Redeeming Relevance: Esav: The Off the Derekh Patriarch
Rav Hirsch famously criticizes Yitzchak and Rivkah for not educating Esav according to his innate personality, and instead trying to force him to be like Ya’akov. His insight is meant to teach that while it was Esav that made the choice to go ‘off the derekh,’ there is always much that parents can try to do before that happens.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Toldot: Switching the Land On and Off
Being bound on Mount Moriah gave Yitzchak a connection with God that would be disturbed by living outside the Land of Israel.
Redeeming Relevance: Did God set Avraham up for Failure?
In fact – at its core – there is no better argument than Avraham’s. For his petition is asking for nothing else than what is good for God. For when God executes strict justice, He often “sacrifices” His own reputation for the sake of the truth.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Noach: Do We Really Understand why Murder is Wrong?
If so, why was Noah commanded not to murder (and, likely, other old commandments) as well? Apparently, there was something not yet completely intuitive, and that was the sanctity of life.
Redeeming Relevance; V’Zot HaBracha: Moshe’s Blessings and his Successful Failure
Yet in spite of Moshe’s best intentions, it is obvious that his blessings – as we have portrayed them – had little effect on the Jews once they reached the Land of Israel.
Redeeming Relevance: Moshe’s Command to Die
When we cannot fully understand God’s decision that accepting it shows our true allegiance to Him
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Nitzavim: The Secrets of God’s Plan B
Can God justifiably blame us for something we don’t know?
Redeeming Relevance: How to Enjoy this World
There is nothing wrong – and actually everything right – about loving God’s world. But to be significant, it must be a love grounded in enhanced awareness and appreciation of God.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Re’eh: How to See God in the World
Whether in its variation or in its norms, the world around us provides countless ways to see God. But that will only happen to someone who is looking for them. In other words if we really want to see God, we must also seek God.
Redeeming Relevance: When Moshe Threw a Book Across the Classroom
Most of Devarim is Moshe’s series of parting lectures to the Jewish people. Two things about them are clearly felt – the first is that they are long, often abstract and sometimes even appear repetitive; and the second is that Moshe accordingly uses diverse tactics to keep the Jews listening.
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