What’s Jewish about Jewish Leadership?
Dec 16, 2013 By Marc Gary | Commentary | Shemot
A few years back, I was sitting in a class for prospective leaders of the Jewish community and yawning. Although the class was organized by a prestigious Jewish institution and gathered together an invitation-only group of accomplished men and women from business and the professions, I kept looking at my watch and planning my escape.
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Illustrations of Moses in the Amsterdam Haggadah, 1695
Jan 9, 2015 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary | Shemot | Pesah
Strikingly, Moses is barely mentioned in the text of the Haggadah, despite his prominence in the Torah’s account of the Exodus that begins with this week’s parashah. He is, however, prominently featured in some editions via the illustrations.
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Guided by the Covenant
Jan 12, 2007 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shemot
There is a wonderful midrash in Pesikta de-Rav Kahana that suggests a profound relationship between the arrival of the manna described in Parashat Be’shallah and the giving of the Ten Commandments recounted in the following parashah, Yitro. Just as the manna tasted different to each and every Israelite, Rabbi Yosi teaches, so each was enabled according to his or her particular capacity to hear the Divine Word differently at Sinai (12:25).
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The Landscape of Revelation
Jan 2, 2016 By Eitan Fishbane | Commentary | Shemot
“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. . .The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?…”
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Hope and the Unknown
Jan 2, 2016 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Shemot
As legend has it, my great-grandfather quit school after the eighth grade. Apparently this decision had little to do with academics: my Grandpa Harry, z”l, was a smart man who went on to become a successful furrier with his own business in Manhattan. No, apparently it had everything to do with social pressure. As legend has it, he walked into school on the first day of the ninth grade, realized that no one at his new school knew him, and walked out.
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Cultivating Compassion & Connection
Jan 9, 2015 By Mona Fishbane | Commentary | Shemot
At the end of chapter two of Shemot, we find the Israelites groaning from their bondage in Egypt: their cry rose up to God. And, our text tells us, God heard their cry (vayishma), remembered the covenant (vayizkor), saw the children of Israel (vayar), and took notice or knew (vayeda). I want to explore with you the relational and ethical lessons we can learn from these verses in our own lives. In doing so, I am inspired by comments in the Kedushat Levi, the book written by the Hasidic Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev. I am grateful to Jonathan Slater and his new book, A Partner in Holiness, for bringing the insights of the Kedushat Levi to my attention.
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