Redeeming Relevance: Pesach’s Missing Eighth Day
Appreciate that Pesach is NOT meant to end on the seventh day, but at Shavuot. With that in mind, we need to work harder to accept making the days of sefirat ha-omer into days akin to chol ha-moed
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Ve’etchanan :Why You Don’t Need to Worship Idols
...And Why You Might Have Thought Otherwise
God’s Idolatrous Gentile Priests
What does this have to do Yom Kippur?
The Benefits of the Evil Amongst Us
Exposure to evil prevents us from an illusion of pleasant stability--and stability is the very thing that prevents the good from getting better.
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: Parshat Lech Lecha: Listening to Voices
Listening to your biblical partner's voice
Redeeming Relevance: How Not to Ruin a Perfectly Good Blessing
The priestly blessing in this week’s parsha begins with the famous request that God bless and keep/guard (shomer) the Jews. While the meaning of blessing is reasonably straightforward, the meaning of keeping or guarding is less clear.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Pinchas: Midian, Moab and Yisrael
The fact it was specifically Midianite and Moabite women involved with Jewish men {Moshe and men involved with Ba'al Peor) shows that an existential bond existed between these nations and Israel.
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: Why House Clothes Simply Won’t Do
It might seem easier to pray alone to God, rather than with the various distractions of a communal setting. True, Jewish law actually recognizes this and tries to minimize these distractions by recommending a set seat, prohibiting holding objects, etc. Still, the many distractions are impossible to completely eliminate. Yet in spite of its drawbacks, we derive strength from doing things together with a group.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Reeh: The Taste for Blood and the Imperative of Relevance
Is the Torah to be read exactly as the Jews who received it would have, or, is it actually to be read in a contemporary way that can't possibly be the same as those who first received the Torah?
Redeeming Relevance: The Desert Bubble: Parshat Shelach
The incident of the spies was a completely new and problematic transgression, it was not toward the rarified wilderness, but rather toward the earthly existence promised in the Land of Israel.
Redeeming Relevance: Ki Tissa
Paradoxically, it is when we confront evil we have the opportunity to make the world a better place.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Shelach
The Children of Israel chose a natural human existence, as opposed to living supernatural lives
Redeeming Relevance: Moshe’s Speech to Jews Living Today
While Moshe saw all the Jews as one whole, it was the ones in front of him who served as the representatives for all those who had lived and would live in the future.
The Book of Speech; Redeeming Relevance on Parshat Devarim
An obstacle to understanding Devarim is thinking of it as a book. Devarim literally means “[spoken] words” and should therefore be primarily considered in its 'orality'
When Ya’akov Became Two People
Ya'akov's youth resembles that of his passive and isolated[…] father, his adult life resembles the trials and tribulations of Abraham among the nations.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Ki Tavo: Amalek, Bikkurim and Ma’aser
Many commentators sense a significance to the placement of the bikkurim declaration, at the beginning of this week’s pasha, right after the injunction to destroy Amalek. What is the connection?
What to do When Our Decisions Bring Casualties
When God gets angry at the people, all Moshe can do is fall on his face in grief at his own responsibility about what was happening--
But Moshe doesn’t stay on his face for long.
Redeeming Relevance in the Weekly Parsha: Vayishlach
By the time Yaakov becomes Yisrael, however, his worldview has changed dramatically.
Parents, Teachers, and the Image of G-d
There is one great payback to mentoring. It brings one a certain type of immortality even in this world.
Moshe and the Missing Matriarch
One may then raise the question of why should Moshe have gotten married to begin with
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Vayikra: Torat Kohanim and the Torah on One Foot
Vayikra, the Torah’s middle book, gives the critical light to the Torah's other books around it.
Redeeming Relevance in the Weekly Parsha: Chayei Sarah
Avraham was asked to nullify his identity, by fulfilling the opposite of what he believed right.
Redeeming Relevance: Halachic Man and Authentic Man
Even as Western society has become uncomfortable with religion, it has also become increasingly uncomfortable with its own discomfort.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Chayei Sarah: Avraham’s Canaanite Wife
Avraham showed himself to be a mentor for all peoples that God created. If he had previously kept his distance, he would now go to the other extreme of marrying a Canaanite woman, and fathering and raising her children.
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Yitro: Good Failures and Bad Failures
No one is surprised that the Torah wasn’t given immediately after the Jews left Egypt, even though it was the first logical time for such an event to happen. But why not earlier or later on the trek?
Redeeming Relevance: Parshat Vayikra: Ownership, Chametz and the Sacrificial Conundrum
There is likely some connection between the prohibition of chametz on the altar and the chametz which is more likely on our minds as we rid our homes of this most challenging foodstuff.
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: Rosh Hashanah: What was Avraham Supposed to do for an Encore?
No matter how hard we work on ourselves, we can never be totally prepared for the challenges ahead. And that is actually a good thing. Not only would life be less interesting, but a great deal of its meaning would otherwise be taken away. As Rebbe Nachman said, “If you are not a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for a tomorrow?”