“Echad Mi Yodea” (“Who Knows One?”)

“Echad Mi Yodea” (“Who Knows One?”)

Apr 2, 2015 By Sarah Diamant | Commentary | Pesah

Echad Mi Yodea” is a traditional cumulative-number song found in the Haggadah. Each verse circles back to the Oneness of God.

Read More
Restoration

Restoration

Mar 27, 2015 By Craig Scheff | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol | Tzav

“What is certain is that you love bringing things back to life. It is a wonderful feeling to identify the undermining factors, eradicate them, and restore something to its true glory.”

Strengthsfinder 2.0 is a popular assessment tool for identifying and applying an individual’s strengths. The book is based on the premise that we should spend more time in our professional lives building upon our strengths than trying to overcome our weaknesses. The quote above refers to the person who possesses the “restorative” talent, the ability to resuscitate and rekindle the vitality of relationships.

Read More
Shattered Tablets

Shattered Tablets

Mar 6, 2015 By Daniel Heschel Silberbusch | Commentary | Ki Tissa

What fascinates me about this moment in the Torah (Ex. 32:15-19) is what we forget because we too well remember how the story ends.

Read More
The Construction of the Tabernacle From the Hebrew Republic (1700)

The Construction of the Tabernacle From the Hebrew Republic (1700)

Feb 20, 2015 By Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary | Commentary | Terumah

The Hebrew Republic (De Republica Hebraeorum in the original Latin) was written in the aftermath of Dutch independence from Spain. Petrus Cunaeus principally drew from biblical and Talmudic sources and from Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah in order to reconstruct (or, in reality, construct) the development, structure, and challenges of an ancient Hebrew republic, with the intention of providing a model for the emerging Dutch republic that was both religious and practical.

Read More
Shabbat: A Model Of, and For, the World

Shabbat: A Model Of, and For, the World

Feb 6, 2015 By William Friedman | Commentary | Yitro

In Parashat Yitro, the command to “remember” Shabbat (Exod. 20:8) is observed in order to recognize the eternal sanctity of the day on which God rested on the seventh day of Creation. This command is recapitulated in Deuteronomy with significant revision: the Israelites are to “observe” Shabbat (Deut. 5:12) in order to ensure that slaves (i.e., workers) are given an opportunity for rest. What are we to make of these dual aspects of Shabbat, one in which we reenact God’s primordial resting; the other in which we attempt to achieve a measure of protection for the economically vulnerable?

Read More
Law and Justice

Law and Justice

Feb 13, 2015 By Martin Oppenheimer | Commentary | Mishpatim

As an attorney, I am fascinated by the code of civil and criminal law contained in Mishpatim. In Egypt, law was made by the Pharoah, who could unilaterally decide the fate of his subjects. All lives and property were forfeit at his whim—as his subjects learned during the course of the plagues, and when the Egyptian army was decimated at the Red Sea. Conversely, Mosaic law focuses on equality and social justice. The poor, the downtrodden, the stranger—even the man whose destitution forced him to sell himself into slavery—were required to be treated with dignity under the law.

Read More
“We Were Slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt”

“We Were Slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt”

Jan 23, 2015 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bo

Mount Sinai and a pyramid mirror each other, two halves of a whole. The pyramid is upside down, demonstrating that slavery is unnatural. Servitude distorts reality and ambition. This distortion comes not only from slavery to a human master, but also from when we become enslaved to our own drives—lacking the ability to envision an alternative or to hold fast to hope.

Read More
Eternity in a Word

Eternity in a Word

Jan 16, 2015 By Joel Alter | Commentary | Va'era

God’s name YHVH is the verb “to be” with the past, present, and future tenses folded into the same conjugation: Eternity or Being in a single word.

Read More