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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.

Mountains Hanging by a Hair

Feb 18, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa

The Mishnah, edited by Rabbi Judah the Patriarch around the year 200, describes the laws of Shabbat as “mountains hanging by a hair,” because its vast legal articulation rests on such a slight scriptural base. The comment is disarmingly candid and wholly accurate. From the Torah itself we know that the weekly observance of Shabbat is to be the centerpiece of the Israelite religious edifice, yet we garner very little about how the Torah understands the concept of rest.

The Lesson of the Golden Calf

Feb 26, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa

One third of the book of Exodus is devoted to the construction of the tabernacle, God’s mobile dwelling in the wilderness. I suspect that we moderns find the devil, and not God, in the profusion and repetition of details. The Torah could mercifully have spared us its twice-told tale, first God’s instructions to Moses (Ex. 25-31) and then his execution of them (Ex. 35-40).

Ki Tissa

Jan 1, 1980

¹¹ The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ¹² When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled.