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The Universal and Particular Nature of Creation
Oct 22, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Bereishit
Shortly after Rosh Hashanah this year, Jewish extremists torched a mosque in an Arab-Israeli village in the Galilee, damaging the building and destroying its holy books. Two days later, a rabbinic statement condemning this desecration of a house of worship on Israeli soil garnered the signatures of more than a thousand rabbis of all denominations within 36 hours of the document’s publication. One of my former JTS classmates, however, explained with great disappointment why he did not add his name to this effort.
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Creation and Good Health
Oct 22, 2011 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bereishit | Simhat Torah
With this week’s celebration of Simhat Torah and Shabbat Bereishit, we return to the very beginning of Torah as we read anew the narratives of Creation, the Garden of Eden, and the tragedy of Cain and Abel.
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Reason Versus Faith
Oct 22, 2011 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Bereishit
If the ancients worried to prove God’s existence, the challenge of Darwinian evolution posed an even greater threat: counterevidence to the biblical account of Creation. In the postmodern era, we Jews-in-the-center find ourselves oddly caught in the middle of a debate portrayed in the news media as between those who insist literally on the biblical account and those who reject it altogether.
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Mastery or Care?
Oct 2, 2010 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bereishit
This coming Shabbat, we return to the beginning of the Torah with Parashat Bereishit.
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Adam’s Fear of a Darkening World
Oct 2, 2010 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Bereishit
The shock of the unexpected, the fear of change, the guilt at having done something irreversible: feelings we know all too well. When things go badly, our gut response is often, “Why me?” We then probe our actions to discover the trigger that caused it all, and bemoan our fate with those closest to us. What can the Torah teach us about how to deal with these feelings through the story of Adam?
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To Begin Again
Oct 2, 2010 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Bereishit
The shock of the unexpected, the fear of change, the guilt at having done something irreversible: feelings we know all too well.
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The Relevance of History
Oct 1, 2010 By Jonathan Milgram | Commentary | Bereishit
Although the book of Genesis is exceedingly familiar to us, there is not a year that goes by when most of us are not struck by one aspect or another of the text, as if reading it for the very first time. It is the universal and profound message of Genesis that enables us to look at the parashah, year after year, and find in it something new, fresh, and even inspirational. One of the central themes of the reading, Bereishit, is that God created humankind in God’s own image.
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The Torah and Its Clearly Ambiguous Message
Oct 17, 2009 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Bereishit | Simhat Torah
There is a verse that I love to invoke whenever I teach about “the poetics of biblical narrative,” and it doesn’t come from this week’s portion (but who’s keeping score, anyway?). Instead, it is found in the first extended legal section, Parashat Mishpatim (Exod. 21–24). Loosely translated, this is the text: “In all charges of misunderstanding . . . whereof one party alleges, ‘This is it!’—the case of both parties shall come before God” (Exod. 22:8); the Hebrew phrase underlying the words “this is it!” is: כי הוא זה (ki hu zeh). The verse seems to be addressing a case in which no one side has a total claim on the truth; in such a case, then, one is bidden to consider both possibilities.
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The First Mitzvah
Oct 24, 2008 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Bereishit
If the Torah is fundamentally a book of law, a work intended to instruct us on how to live a life that is holy and good, why did the Torah begin with the story of creation? More precisely, why did the Torah begin with the story of Genesis—of God’s creation of the world—and not the first commandment to the Israelites which is to establish a calendar: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of the months,” found later in Exodus 12? This is the first question that Rashi, the central medieval commentator on the Torah, asked on the opening words of the book of Genesis.
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Making Meaning From Chaos
Oct 5, 2007 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Bereishit
The opening words of B’reishit are exhilarating. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
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Creation and Revelation
Oct 21, 2006 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bereishit
Creation and the act of creating stand at the essence of Parashat Bereishit.
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Creation As Preparation for Sinai
Oct 21, 2006 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Bereishit
Why did the Torah begin where it does, at the very Beginning, rather than with the first commandment given the children of Israel, which comes well into the Book of Exodus?
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Between Creation and Revelation
Oct 21, 2006 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bereishit
Creation and the act of creating stand at the essence of Parashat Bereishit.
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Between Creation and the Flood
Oct 29, 2005 By Burton L. Visotzky | Commentary | Bereishit
In the beginning, Dr. Ismar Schorsch was a rigorous scholar, a great teacher, and Chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary.
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The Garments of Adam and Eve
Oct 25, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
When Franz Rosenzweig published his unconventional German translation of ninety-two Hebrew poems by Judah Halevi, he headed his afterword self-effacingly with a plea from a German translator of The Iliad: “Oh dear reader, learn Greek and throw my translation into the fire.”
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The Gift of Shabbat
Oct 25, 2003 By Rachel Ain | Commentary | Bereishit
In Parashat Bereishit, we are told that “God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27).
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In God’s Image
Oct 25, 2003 By Rachel Ain | Commentary | Bereishit
In Parashat Bereishit , we are told that “God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27).
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The Conversion Controversy
Oct 5, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
Conversion is back in the news. During the High-Holy-Day period just ended, a Conservative rabbinic court in Eastern Europe completed the conversion process of eighteen Czech and nineteen Polish converts to Judaism. Some 80 per cent had Jewish roots. All studied formally for at least a full year (many more) and were obliged to be active in their respective Jewish communities. Prior to conversion, the men underwent either a full or symbolic ritual circumcision (if already circumcised), while both men and women went through ritual immersion. Another half-dozen in Prague are on their way to completing the conversion process.
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On New Beginnings
Oct 5, 2002 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bereishit
As a teacher for JTS Kollot: Voices of Learning, I hear many voices of Torah that open my eyes to creative ways of reading the texts of our sacred tradition.
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Sight and Knowledge
Oct 5, 2002 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Bereishit
As a teacher for JTS Kollot: Voices of Learning, I hear many voices of Torah that open my eyes to creative ways of reading the texts of our sacred tradition.
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