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Moving Towards Perfection

Feb 5, 2000 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Mishpatim

The controversies of one era are not necessarily those of another. When a leader of the Southern Baptists can declare on the Larry King Show that the soul of a Jew is still destined to burn in hell, we are jarringly thrown back to the bigotry of an earlier era bloodied by religious persecution. Progress can be measured by the once bitterly contested issues that no longer get a rise out of us. This is the reason I continue to enjoy looking at the Hertz Humash. Produced in England under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century, it resonates with the polemics of an era when much of the enlightened world, not to speak of the benighted, still harbored grave doubts about the religious worth of Judaism. Our adversaries often determine the emphasis of our thought.

The Experience of Revelation

Feb 13, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Mishpatim | Shabbat Shekalim

With exuberance and certainty, the young Heinrich Graetz, not yet 30 but soon to become the greatest Jewish historian of the nineteenth century, made a distinction between Judaism and paganism that would in time become commonplace: “To the pagan, the divine appears within nature as something observable to the eye. He becomes conscious of it as something seen. In contrast, to the Jew who knows that the divine exists beyond, outside of, and prior to nature, God reveals Himself through a demonstration of His will, through the medium of the ear. The human subject becomes conscious of the divine through hearing and obeying. Paganism sees its god, Judaism hears Him; that is, it hears the commandments of His will.”

Judaism and Reproductive Rights

Jan 28, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Mishpatim

At the end of August 1993, I joined some 100 religious leaders of a moderate stripe who were invited by the President and First Lady for breakfast at the White House. What gave the event an added dose of excitement for me was the good luck to be seated at the President’s table.

Linking Narrative to Law

Feb 5, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Mishpatim

With this week’s parasha, our landscape changes abruptly. We take leave of the hospitable realm of narrative history and enter the austere world of legal rules and cultic regulations, where we shall stay put, with but one brief excursion, till we reach chapter 11 of the book of Numbers. There can be no doubt that law is central to the Torah’s conception of religion. Boundaries create order and give shape to existence. Community springs from the limits placed on individual freedom.

Mishpatim

Jan 1, 1980

¹ These are the rules that you shall set before them:

Mishpatim

Jan 1, 1980

⁸ The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord after King Zede- kiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to proclaim a release among them — ⁹