Our Sacred Partnerships
May 27, 2011 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Bemidbar
In this week’s Torah and haftarah portions, the specter of rupture looms repeatedly. First, we are reminded of the deaths of Aaron’s two older sons, Nadav and Avihu. Similarly, our parashah recounts the undoing of the sacred place held by the firstborn sons, chosen to be dedicated to God when they were saved from the 10th plague, the plague of the slaying of the firstborns. Finally, in the haftarah, Hosea tells the story of Israel the Unfaithful, through the vehicle of Gomer, his harlot-wife.
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The Poetry of Sinai
May 27, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Bemidbar
I rarely encounter texts like the midrash above that so completely challenge static notions about Torah.
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Blessing From the Inside Out
May 21, 2011 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Behukkotai
One of the claims that seems to have been made at different moments in my Jewish education is that Judaism concerns itself with what a person does in the world and not with what a person thinks. The Torah demands we pursue a life rightly lived over beliefs rightly held. This argument underscores that the project of Torah is concerned with our behavior and not our internal life.
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The Ancestral Roots of our Morals
May 21, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Vayikra
How wonderful to derive a great lesson from such a simple turn of phrase.
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Man’s Plans vs. God’s Plans
May 20, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Behukkotai
I have such good intentions when I start off my day or my week.
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Freeing Today’s Slaves
May 13, 2011 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Behar
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” These words from our parashah (Leviticus 25:10) are famously inscribed upon the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and they have resounded as a message of hope for the oppressed throughout the world. Yet our parashah also contains a darker message that endorses slavery, just as America has paired proclamations of liberty with cruel practices of slavery and discrimination throughout its history. In the same chapter of Leviticus, we read that non-Israelite residents of the land may be acquired as permanent slaves, and may be kept “as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property for all time.”
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We Are All Borrowers
May 13, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Behar
I love discovering rabbinic texts like the one above that make such radical claims about Torah and God in general or about particular laws like tzedakah (righteous giving), one subject at the heart of this week’s Torah portion.
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Bringing Compassion into Our Lives
May 7, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Emor
Late this past Sunday night, Erev Yom HaSho’ah (the Eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day), I heard the news that Osama bin Laden was dead, that the most infamous nemesis of the United States since Hitler and Stalin had been killed in an American military operation to capture him. While watching the television reports of celebrations outside the White House and near Ground Zero, I felt mixed emotions: relief for the end of the manhunt; elation over the retribution for innocent lives lost; and discomfort with my pride in the violent end of another human life, even one as murderous as this adversary’s was.
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The Cycles of Nature
May 7, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Emor
A midrash for any attorney or accountant to love, the last line of which already rings with the oy vey iz mir tone which has come down to us via Tevye and Seinfeld as a quintessentially Jewish mode of wry humor.
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Loving in God’s Image
Apr 30, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Kedoshim
At numerous points in Jewish history, rabbis and scholars have addressed the question of what tenet or observance represents the heart of Judaism. Seldom, however, have our teachers argued the converse about a biblical text that ought to be eliminated from the canon.
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The Origins of a Nation
Apr 23, 2011 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Pesah
As we set our tables and prepare for our seders, we cannot help but hear the echoes of our journey from persecution to freedom amplified in the headlines. Our holiday of Hodesh Ha’aviv—the “Month of the Spring”—comes at a time when the ripple effects of what has been dubbed the Arab Spring are just beginning to be felt.
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Midrash as Filter
Apr 18, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Pesah
From sensual poetry to rules and penalties: how did that happen?
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A New Question for Passover
Apr 16, 2011 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol | Pesah
The means to ultimate redemption—and a sure sign that redemption has arrived—is peace between the generations. We can’t hope for redemption of the world, the prophet says, if the hearts of fathers and sons (the literal translation of the prophetic verse) are not “returned upon” each other.
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Singing about Sacrifice
Apr 16, 2011 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Pinehas
When I attended junior congregation as a child, one of my favorite Shabbat morning songs began with the words uv’yom haShabbat. We kids used to belt it out. I remember the same thing happening when I spent summers as a camper at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. But why sing today about slaughtering and offering up lambs on the altar in the Temple? An answer can be found in this week’s Parashat Pinhas, where these words, or rather these verses, originate.
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Let All Who Are Hungry Come and Eat
Apr 16, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Aharei Mot | Shabbat Hagadol
One of my favorite customs for Shabbat Hagadol is to read the Maggid section of the Passover Haggadah in advance of the first seder.
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The State of Catholic-Jewish Relations in the United States
Apr 12, 2011 By The Jewish Theological Seminary | Public Event video
A lecture by The Most Reverend Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York, and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Followed by a dialogue between Archbishop Dolan and JTS Chancellor Arnold M. Eisen.
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Metzora: Disease or Dis-ease?
Apr 9, 2011 By Leonard A. Sharzer | Commentary | Metzora
When I tell people that Parashat Metzora and Parashat Tazri·a, which we read last week, are among my favorite parashiyot, they often respond, “Well of course, you were a physician and they are filled with medical information.” But if Tazri·a and Metzora are to be read as medical texts, there would be very little point in reading them at all. For one thing, the dominant subject of the texts is something called tzara’at and we really have no idea what that is. Though often translated as leprosy, modern scholarship is quite consistent that whatever the condition is, it is not what modern medicine knows as leprosy. More importantly, besides not knowing what the described condition really is or precisely what some of the specific terms mean, I would like to suggest that these chapters were never intended to be read as medical texts.
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Humanity: Both Glory and Shame
Apr 9, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Metzora
Rabbi Morris Shapiro (z”l) spent his last years teaching in the JTS beit midrash. He was a Holocaust survivor and arguably one of the best talmudic minds of his generation, and we who had the privilege of learning with him here knew well that one of his most frequently cited teachings was the phrase this midrash brings to mind: know before Whom you stand.
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Between Tum’ah and Tohorah
Apr 2, 2011 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Shabbat Hahodesh | Tazria
It seems more than kismet that Passover falls when it does, following on the heels of the parashiyot of Leviticus in which we discuss the most base of subjects. In fact, rabbis and commentators through the ages have found the laws of tum’ah and tohorah (ritual impurity and purity) covered in these weeks before Passover so unsettling that, presumably in reaction, they have enthusiastically embraced the following statement from the Talmud: “Questions are asked and lectures are given on the laws of Passover beginning thirty days before” (BT Pesachim 6a). Surely, this is an avoidance tactic on the part of rabbis, but maybe it is also for the sake of the community—to save them from many discussions that would make them lose their appetites for the kiddush that follows services.
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Birth, Both Spiritual and Physical
Apr 2, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Tazria
How can men understand something like pregnancy, which is so fundamentally foreign to the male experience? As contemporary Jews, we often raise questions about how our classical sources, compiled by men, portray “the other,” in this case, child-bearing women. We find in the midrash above an ancient rabbi’s attempt to understand childbirth, the opening subject of this week’s Torah portion, and identify men’s role in it.
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