Lessons From the Wilderness
Jun 13, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
Powerful images of authority dominate this week’s Torah portion. How do these images relate to contemporary readers who—despite our distance from the events in the wilderness—remain part of the people Israel’s progress toward the Promised Land?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 12a
Jun 13, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
The two first-century schools of Rabbinic thought, Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel, crop up quite often in the Talmud. Here Rabbi Shimon b. Elazar, an early third-century Sage, quotes their positions. This dispute between the two schools goes to the heart of what the experience of Shabbat should encompass. On the one hand, as I mentioned last week, there is the principle that Shabbat is a time that should be free from worry.
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Becoming Builders
Jun 6, 2009 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Naso
I imagine that all of us have noticed that the only thing unequivocally going up right now is the number of pundits—professional and amateur—who are chiming in on what it is that economic indicators seem to be telling us. At kiddush in my shul, in airports, on television, and certainly on the Internet, anywhere you turn there are people pontificating about where the economy is headed. While you will certainly hear no projection here, in my own reading what caught my eye were two economic indicators that focus specifically on construction and building.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 12a-b
Jun 6, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Shabbat and prayer are deeply connected in the mind of the contemporary Jew. Shabbat is the time when many of us engage in public prayer each week. Though most Conservative synagogues have a weekday minyan, usually its attendance is much smaller than that of the Shabbat service. So it is surprising when we discover that our Sages frowned on the practice of making personal requests of God on Shabbat.
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Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 20a
May 30, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
We’ve seen the idea that carrying from one domain to another is prohibited on Shabbat. This idea is usually (though not always) expressed as “carrying from a public to a private domain” or vice versa. Here we see an additional question rising out of this basic law: What if one stands in one domain and imbibes water from another domain? Is one’s body another domain? Is it part of the domain that one’s feet are in? Is it part of the domain that one’s head is in? Perhaps the Shabbat domains end altogether at one’s lips? And what is the spiritual message about the Shabbat and the body that we are supposed to take away from this?
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Counting Ourselves As Israel
May 23, 2009 By Leonard A. Sharzer | Commentary | Bemidbar
Sefer Bemidbar, the Book of Numbers, which we begin reading this week, opens with the taking of a census. After the rather arcane matters we have been reading about in recent weeks—the sacrificial cult, laws of purity and impurity, skin eruptions, bodily discharges, and so on—the monotony and repetitiveness of this week’s parashah comes almost as a relief. The chieftains of each tribe are named, and an identical formula is recited, concluding with the number of men over the age of twenty—fighting men—in each tribe. For this is not a census of the entire people, rather it is an accounting of those who will make up an army to cross the desert. The Israelites have just celebrated the first anniversary of their liberation, and they are about to embark on a journey that will last thirty-eight years, although they do not know that at the time of the census. They are forming an army to take the population on what should be a short sojourn to the Promised Land. That they should form an army to cross the desert is not surprising; but, we may ask, why the apparent preoccupation with numbers?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 86b
May 23, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
On Shavu’ot we recreate the revelation of Torah. Though we see in the Torah that revelation occurs over a long period, and in many places in the wanderings of the Israelites, nonetheless, the ultimate revelatory model in the Bible is the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai / Horeb in Exodus 20. It is this revelation we seek to commemorate on Shavu’ot. However, there are two unexpected things about this festival. It has no fixed date in the Torah—instead it is linked with the barley harvest; and second, the Torah never explicitly connects it with the Sinai event—though when we calculate the dates given in Exodus 19, the revelation at Sinai (or at least the surrounding events) must have coincided with the regular dates of the festival, early in the month of Sivan, at the time of the barley harvest.
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Rashi’s God and Ibn Ezra’s God
May 16, 2009 By Walter Herzberg | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
I am in the midst of reading Michael Fishbane’s recently published book Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology. Especially compelling, from my perspective, is the emphasis he places on experiencing the act of biblical interpretation which “is understood to foster diverse modes of attention to textual details, which in turn cultivate correlative forms of attention to the world and divine reality” (page xi). To quote my student Rachel Isaacs (rabbinical student in my Advanced Exegesis class), “Fishbane articulates most clearly the reason why rabbinical students are engaged in the types of learning they are. Close reading [of the Torah text] is not a useless skill or a rite of passage. It forces us to have an intimate, thoughtful, and challenging relationship with the text. As a result, we acquire new revelations through the process of encountering the text as much as we do from the content itself.”
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 113a
May 16, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
We have seen this source before. When last we saw it, I mentioned that some of our Sages felt that objects which could not be used on Shabbat in any permitted way should be utterly outlawed for the entire twenty-five-hour period of Shabbat. This is the prohibition that came to be known as muktzeh(things placed to the side). If an object has no use on Shabbat, it is in this category and, generally, may not be picked up and moved to another location on Shabbat. This is different than the prohibition on carrying from one domain to another, which we have been discussing the last few weeks. This later prohibition, termed hotza’ah (literally, carrying out), applies to all objects.
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Caring for Our Parents
May 9, 2009 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Aharei Mot | Kedoshim
The third verse of Parashat K’doshim says, “Ish imo v’aviv tira’u” (One should revere his mother and father) (Lev. 19:3). The same mandate appears twice as the fifth commandment, “Kabed et avikha v’et imekha” (Honor your father and your mother) (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). Honoring parents was considered a virtue in the Roman world. Parents took care of their children, and children were expected to return the favor when parents grew old. But Rome did not create a legal obligation to care for parents, and a child who refused to do so could not be compelled by the courts.
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Developing True Leadership
May 9, 2009 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Emor
Ten years ago, when I began teaching for The Jewish Theological Seminary, I had the honor of teaching in the office of a prominent New York businessman who would go on to become a political visionary and leader. When I was introduced to this executive as “Rabbi” Matthew Berkowitz, he responded by wagging his finger at me, remarking, “You people [read: clergy] are responsible for every conflict in this world.” Though taken aback by his opening salvo, I composed myself and responded, “With all due respect, the problem is not the message but the messenger; and you have yet to meet a good messenger.” While I was proud of my comeback, I also understood the rationale and frustration underlying his comment.
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Mishnah Eruvin 10:1
May 9, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Our Sages considered it proscribed labor to carry any burden of value from one domain to another on Shabbat. As we noted last time, it is not the weight of an item that constitutes its significance in the Rabbinic mind, but the value that people ascribe to it. Some items have value because of their utility (food, for example), while others have value due to their sacred nature. One such sacred item is a pair of tefillin. In this mishnah, we see that one is prohibited from carrying tefillin from one domain to another (here, from the outdoors to indoors) on Shabbat, even to protect them from harm. Rather, the mishnah suggests, put on the tefillin and walk indoors. In this way, one preserves the sacred object without violating Shabbat.
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Mishnah Shabbat 7:3
May 2, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
I mentioned last week, in passing, that one violates the prohibition of carrying from domain to domain on Shabbat if one carries an object of value. How do we measure the value of objects?
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Realizing Our Human Potential
Apr 25, 2009 By Alan Cooper | Commentary | Metzora | Tazria
This week’s double dose of purity laws is unlikely to top anyone’s list of favorite Torah portions. While the laws may be discomfiting and obscure, however, they also are fundamental to an understanding of biblical theology and anthropology, and they convey a message that transcends their particular details.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 153a
Apr 25, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
If I am traveling on Friday afternoon and am unable to reach my home before Shabbat begins, what am I to do with my burdens? I am not allowed to carry in a public domain on Shabbat, as we have seen previously. As far as the Talmud is concerned, carrying anything of value constitutes labor. So, should I lay my burdens down and lose all the valuables I was carrying when Shabbat began? Is this some kind of “punishment” for not having planned my trip more carefully?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 2b
Apr 18, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
The Tosefta above is an odd text. It tells us that there are four Shabbat domains. We are prohibited from carrying from one type of domain to another on Shabbat. For instance, we may not carry anything of significance from our house (a “private domain”) to a major street (a “public domain”) on Shabbat. So far, so good. The odd thing here is that the Tosefta seems to provide only two of its four domains. Are there not two more domains that the Tosefta omits?
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Completing Creation
Apr 17, 2009 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Metzora | Tazria
One of the better known rabbinic midrashim connects the disease of leprosy with the sin of slandering: that is, God afflicts the slanderer with leprosy (B.T. Arakhin 15b). Underlying the connection is the close resemblance in the Hebrew words for each. According to Resh Lakish, who authored this midrash in the third century long after the Temple had been leveled, the biblical term for leprosy, metzora (Leviticus 14:1), is but a compressed form of the rabbinic term for slandering, motzi shem ra (literally, to give someone a bad name). Even to an ear untrained in Hebrew, the similarity in sounds of this clever identification is apparent.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 133a
Apr 11, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Some mitzvot require us to violate Shabbat and festivals. For instance, the Torah requires that brit milah, the covenant of circumcision, take place on the eighth day of an Israelite boy’s life. The eighth day is its required time, even though that day may fall on Shabbat or a festival. The same is true with regard to the mitzvah of bringing the Paschal sacrifice—our Israelite ancestors were required to slaughter their Paschal lambs and offer their blood upon the altar on the fourteenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan and eat them on the night of the fifteenth, no matter whether one of these days was Shabbat or not.
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What God Wants From Us
Apr 7, 2009 By Benjamin D. Sommer | Commentary | Tetzavveh
What is the book of Exodus about? At first glance, the answer seems easy. As the English title states, it tells the story of the exodus from Egypt, the story of how God rescued the Israelites from slavery by defeating Pharaoh and his armies. A second glance, however, shows that this answer cannot be right.
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Engaging Our Sons and Daughters at the Seder Table
Apr 4, 2009 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Pesah
I’ll be thinking a lot about my roles as father and son at the seder this year. Having lost my dad between last Passover and this one (my mom died eleven years ago), I’ll be sitting down at the seder table for the first time as someone without living parents.
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