A Beacon for the Years that Lie Ahead

A Beacon for the Years that Lie Ahead

Mar 30, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Tzav | Tishah Be'av

The Talmud tells that at the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in the year 586 B.C.E., the following poignant scene unfolded: “Many clusters of young priests ascended to the roof of the sanctuary with its keys in their hands and said: Lord of the Universe, since we lacked the merit to be trustworthy caretakers, let these keys be returned to Your possession.’ They threw them in the air and half-a-hand, so it appeared, stretched forth to take them in. The young priests then jumped directly into the flames.

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To Be Heard Is to Be Helped

To Be Heard Is to Be Helped

Mar 23, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayikra

Translations conceal as much as they convey.

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Torah in the Face of Tragedy

Torah in the Face of Tragedy

Mar 9, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa

The month of Adar has hardly been a herald of joy for our people this year, as it traditionally is.

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Memory: Judaism’s Lifeblood

Memory: Judaism’s Lifeblood

Mar 2, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Purim

My father died 14 years ago. This week I will observe his Yahrzeit once again.

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Forging Faith: Persistent Human Effort Vs. Divine Miracles

Forging Faith: Persistent Human Effort Vs. Divine Miracles

Feb 3, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beshallah

The end of a story often illuminates its beginning.

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Asking Questions

Asking Questions

Jan 27, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bo

Isidor I. Rabi, who was born in Austria in 1898, won the Nobel prize in physics in 1944.

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Judaism and the Afterlife

Judaism and the Afterlife

Jan 6, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayehi

The title of this week’s parasha is full of irony.

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Abraham the Noble Warrior

Abraham the Noble Warrior

Nov 4, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha

The Torah does not give us a complete biography of Abraham, only a series of striking vignettes.

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A Bold Exegetical Gambit

A Bold Exegetical Gambit

Nov 2, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei

Why does Jacob abandon the security of his parents home in Beer-sheba?

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Conquering Passions

Conquering Passions

Oct 28, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah

My favorite Jewish ritual is the recitation of havdalah at the end of Shabbat. It is a love rooted in childhood.

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Isaiah Berlin and Kant

Isaiah Berlin and Kant

Oct 21, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit

I like Isaiah Berlin’s favorite quotation from Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.”

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The Power of Prayer

The Power of Prayer

Oct 3, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yom Kippur

The High Holy Days don’t play to our strength. The extended services put a premium on prayer, an activity at which we are no longer very adept. Yom Kippur asks of us to spend an entire day in the synagogue immersed in prayer. But we find it easier to believe in God than to pray to God. It is this common state of discomfort that prompts me to share with you a few thoughts on the art of Jewish praying.

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On Baseball and Jewish Endurance

On Baseball and Jewish Endurance

Sep 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah

Seminary lore has it that Solomon Schechter advised the young Louis Ginzberg, when he joined the faculty, to master the game of baseball.

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Praying for Rain

Praying for Rain

Sep 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot

Rainfall has been sparse this summer in much of the northeast, and the reservoirs of New York City are some 24% lower than normal for this time of year.

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The Pursuit of Peace

The Pursuit of Peace

Jul 2, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pinehas | Sukkot

Experience often has a way of eroding our ideals. While the evidence for this sad fact abounds, I wish to illustrate it anew in the exegetical fate of a passage in this week’s parasha. The parasha concludes with a succinct statement of the sacrifices to be offered in the Tabernacle throughout the year.

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On Korah and Spinoza

On Korah and Spinoza

Jul 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah

When I was a rambunctious kid growing up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the name of Benedict de Spinoza came to me as easily as that of Ted Williams or Stan Musial or Sid Luckman. If the latter three were among my childhood heroes, the former meant a great deal to my father. He spoke often of Spinoza’s grand conception of God as the sum total of all that exists. Indeed, body and mind were but two attributes of God’s infinite nature. There were countless others which we would never know. For my father, Spinoza represented the fullest and finest expression of Judaism’s historic quest to understand the endless diversity of existence in monotheistic terms. On many a Shabbat I was treated to a discourse that eluded the grasp of my inattentive mind. I remember only the stirring intensity of his fascination. Spinoza provided a haven in which the rational bent of my father’s mind and the religious hunger of his heart could both find comfort.

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Biblical Espionage

Biblical Espionage

Jun 24, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shelah Lekha | Tishah Be'av

The story of the twelve spies is well-known and straightforward. As Israel approaches the Promised Land from the south, God instructs Moses to assemble a band of spies, one prominent man from each tribe to measure the strength of its inhabitants: “Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell, good or bad? Are the towns they live in, open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land” (Numbers 13:18-20).

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A Backstory for Moses

A Backstory for Moses

Jun 17, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha

For all the grit and grandeur of his character, Moses could never be the biographical subject of a commercially successful book. We don’t know enough about his private life. New books on Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King sell because they slake our thirst for the salacious. By illuminating their private lives, their authors presume to deepen our understanding of their noteworthy public careers. But by now the quest has become an unedifying end in itself.

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Universal Service of God

Universal Service of God

Jun 3, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bemidbar

Though the Jerusalem Temple is long gone, time has not erased the threefold division of ancient Israel into KohanimLeviim and Yisraelim. Ritual, as it so often does, helps to preserve collective memory. In many synagogues, the first two aliyot to the Torah are still given to a Kohen and a LeviYisraelim, who constitute the majority of us, are not called to the Torah until the third aliyah. On Passover the three matzot that bedeck our seder plates are named (from top to bottom) KohenLevi and Yisrael. In old cemeteries, a pair of hands symbolic of the priestly benediction often mark the tombstone of a Kohen, while the grave of a Levi whose task was to pour water over the hands of the priests before the recitation of the blessing, is signified by a tilted pitcher.

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The Man Who Challenged Exile

The Man Who Challenged Exile

May 31, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behukkotai

The greatest Jewish historian in America of the last generation was Salo Wittmayer Baron, who died in 1989 at the age of 94. Born in Galicia and trained in Vienna, he became the first professor of Jewish history at an American university in 1930, when invited to join the prestigious history department of Columbia University. With unmatched erudition and energy, Baron wrote authoritatively on nearly every aspect of Jewish history. In 1937 he published a highly original three–volume synthesis of all of Jewish history, which he called by the balanced title of A Social and Religious History of the Jews. After the Holocaust he transformed it into a second edition that would grow to 18 volumes by the time of his death, without going beyond the middle of the seventeenth century.

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