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The Power of the Spirit

Jul 26, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Masei | Mattot | Tishah Be'av

This week’s parashah finds the Israelites routing the Midianites. The victory is total; the five kings of Midian and all their male subjects meet their death. The Torah appears to go out of its way to inform us that the Israelites “also put Balaam son of Beor to the sword (31:8).” It is a passing detail that triggered the rabbinic imagination. The narrative fragments which constitute the interaction of this pagan prophet with the fate of Israel seem little more than dots waiting to be connected midrashically. A form of reader participation, midrash embellishes the spare story line of Torah narrative. In the process, it tends to give the material a refreshingly moral twist.

Infusing the World with Holiness

Jul 12, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Balak | Hukkat

After two impressive victories against the Canaanites of the Negeb and the Amorites in Transjordan, the looming military might of Israel throws the leaders of Moab into a panic. Only the land of the Moabites separates Israel from the Jordan River and the conquest of Canaan. Balak ben Zippor, King of Moab, knows that he is next. In desperation, he takes recourse in an unconventional pre-emptive measure. He summons Balaam son of Beor, a sorcerer from Mesopotamia to curse Israel, making it susceptible to defeat on the battlefield. Though Balaam comes, God frustrates the plan. Within the monotheistic framework of the Torah, Balaam can utter only what God imparts to him. Hence he ends up in rapturous praise of Israel, to the consternation of Balak.

Rabbi Akiva’s Adult Bar-Mitzvah

Jun 21, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha

One of the most compelling new rituals in the Conservative synagogue is the adult bat–mitzvah. The impulse is egalitarian, the result religious empowerment. The women who participate enjoyed no bat–mitzvah ceremony in their youth. Years later they seek to fill the void. Usually in small groups of up to a dozen, they study with their rabbi and cantor for a period of at least two years. The practice is so widespread today that the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism has produced a carefully articulated curriculum to enhance the meaningfulness of the experience. Learning to read Hebrew is required. Biblically based yet religiously encompassing, the study period culminates in the preparation of a specific parashah and haftarah to be chanted in the synagogue on a Shabbat morning. There is definitely comfort in numbers. Doing the bat–mitzvah as a group lessens the tension of performing in public. Each participant must master only a part of the whole.

Why We Eat Dairy on Shavu’ot

Jun 7, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shavuot

The menu for the first day of Shavuot is customarily restricted to dairy dishes. While a plethora of explanations has been generated to account for the practice, I prefer the most serious one. Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, the governing covenant between God and Israel, the constitution of the Jewish polity. The event marks the adoption of a religious regimen that would henceforth define the borders of individual and group behavior. That to which the Israelites were formerly entitled is no longer permitted.

The World-to-Come

May 24, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behukkotai

The penultimate chapter of Leviticus consists of a divine plea to heed God’s commandments. It takes the form of inducements and intimidations, promises of agricultural bounty and national tranquility and threats of defeat, chaos and exile. The future of ancient Israel in its homeland will depend entirely on its adherence to the revelation at Sinai. Aside form the poetry of the passage, its rhetoric pulsates with a tone of urgency. Free will has its risks; people may choose to put themselves in harm’s way. Rebellion against the strictures of God is the persistent evil that endangers society.

From Gleaning to Tzedakah

May 10, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Emor

Words often conceal the origins of the idea they denote. Etymology and meaning diverge and thus confound. A good example relates to a halakhic fragment in this week’s parasha. I refer to the verb “to glean.” The word denotes minimal gain through hard work. Basically an agricultural term, it conjures up an image of beggars at harvest time gathering whatever remains in the field after reaping. From there the meaning expands to any activity, physical or mental, that involves collecting painstakingly individual items of the same order from disparate quarters.

The Command to Plant Trees

May 3, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Kedoshim

From our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, we enjoy a glorious view of Riverside Park below and the Hudson River beyond. Overnight, it seems, the trees have once again donned a glorious green canopy of leaves. Gone is the drab garb of winter. Life has surged back with irrepressible vigor and astonishing beauty. Each year I marvel at the swiftness of the scenic change.

Pesah vs. Easter

Apr 19, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pesah

The overlapping this year of Easter and Passover, of the Christian Holy Week with our eight-day celebration of Passover merits attention. Unlike the yoking of Christmas and Hanukkah, Easter and Passover are festivals of equal gravity. Side by side they bring to light the deep structures of both religions.

A Vision of Religious Leadership

Mar 29, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemini

After a profusion of dietary regulations, our parasha reemphasizes the fundamental purpose of Judaism: “For I the Lord am your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy” (11:44). A pervasive sense of holiness is the key to this-worldly salvation. To live wisely requires self-control. There is no creation without contraction. To spring we first need to coil. The regimen of Judaism is to help us keep the big picture in sight, make wholesome distinctions and prevent the numbing of our spiritual sensibility. Transgressions erode our inner life, while doing mitzvot brings an infusion of holiness. In the words of the Rabbis: “If we embark on hallowing our lives on earth, we will be hallowed abundantly from above” (BT Yoma 39a).

Keeping “The Fires of Israel” Lit

Mar 22, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Tzav

In a session not long ago with Seminary students on religious services, I was asked about the restoration of a phrase from the siddur that the Conservative movement had dropped as early as the 1940’s.

Hearing God in the Silence

Mar 15, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayikra

I never heard my parents address each other by their first names. They showed their mutual affection, which remained palpable till late in their lives, by using pet names. My father called my mother “Mutti” (from the German word for mother – Mutter) and my mother always called him “Schatzi” (from the German word for treasure – Schatz). As my father aged, he developed the habit of saying “Mutti” to himself audibly and often, without ever intending to attract her attention. Alone in his study, he would emit the sound of her name when he rose from his desk to get another book or just reclined to rest for a moment. She was clearly the anchor of his life.

A Life of Self-Restraint

Mar 8, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pekudei

Midrash is the art of keeping an ancient sacred text alive. The Rabbis were masters of drawing water from stone, of transforming the most mundane passages of Torah into luminous nuggets of spirituality. Our parashah offers a provocative example of their creative touch.

The Spirituality of Kafka’s Doll

Feb 22, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa

The story is told about Franz Kafka that the last time he visited Berlin, he chanced upon a little girl in a park awash in tears. When he inquired as to the reason for her distress, she sobbed that she had lost her doll. Compassionately, Kafka countered that not to be the case. The doll had merely gone on a trip and, in fact, Kafka met her as she was about to leave. He promised that if the little girl would return to the park the next day, he would bring her a letter from her doll. And so Kafka did for several weeks, arriving each morning at the park with a letter for his new friend.

Between the Wilderness and Jerusalem: A Tale of Two Holy Spaces

Feb 8, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Terumah

This week’s parashah and haftarah are an exercise in counterpoint. Superficially, the construction of sacred space joins them in a common theme. While the Torah portion takes up the erection of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the narrative from the book of Kings recounts the building by Solomon of the First Temple in Jerusalem some 480 years later. The move is from a mobile sanctuary to a permanent one, from wood to stone. Still, the basic design remains the same, an oblong structure with the Holy of Holies (devir) at the rear, farthest away from the entrance. Likewise, the content of the Holy of Holies is unaltered: an ark covered by two large cherubim with outstretched wings. The ark itself contained only the two tablets which attested to the covenant between God and Israel sealed at Mount Sinai.

The Soul of Torah

Jan 25, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yitro

Christianity turns on the doctrine of incarnation as formulated famously by the Gospel of John: “So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (1:14). It is a doctrine that Jews tend to identify as uniquely Christian. Whereas both Judaism and Christianity equally acknowledged that at creation “the Word dwelt with God” (1:1) as both wisdom and instrument, Judaism refrained from ever endowing it with human form. Though valid, the distinction does not preclude the appearance in Judaism of the doctrine. For Judaism, the Word became incarnate as book.

Torah and Jewish Survival

Jan 18, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beshallah

We tend to think of revelation as a highly restrictive term. The fate of a revealed text is to be immutable. We humans have no right to alter what God has given. But in Judaism precisely because the Torah is revered as divine, it becomes susceptible to unending interpretation. It would be a denigration of God’s word to saddle it with just a single meaning. In contrast to human speech, which carries a finite range of meanings, the language of God was deemed to be endowed with an infinity of meanings. This theology freed the Rabbis to do midrash, creating the anomaly of a canon without closure. The vessels kept changing their contents. New challenges elicited new insights into a text inviolable only on the surface.

Dread of Darkness

Jan 11, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bo

Darkness unsettles us. As children we went to sleep with a small light on; as adults we prefer to come home to a dwelling not totally dark. We fear what we cannot see. It is for this reason that we start the evening service with the recitation of a verse from Psalm 78: “But he, the compassionate one, would expiate sin, and not destroy; he would again and again turn back his anger, and would not arouse his full wrath” (v. 38, trans. by Edward J. Greenstein). As the darkness of night envelops us, we affirm God’s nearness. God does not withdraw with the setting of the sun.

Small Acts of Kindness

Jan 4, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Va'era

A careful reading of the Torah narrative would quickly persuade us that not all of the ten plagues are unleashed by Moses. The midrash, in fact, attributes only three to Moses – those of hail, locusts and darkness. The first three plagues – those of blood, frogs and vermin – are attributed to Aaron, while still three others – insects, pestilence and the death of the first born – come directly from God. Finally, one plague – that of boils – is triggered by all three of them jointly.

Stranger in a Foreign Land

Dec 28, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemot

Moses names his first born son Gershom, still a common Hebrew name. The child is born to him and his wife Zipporah in the land of Midian, to which he fled after he murdered an Egyptian taskmaster. We do not hear of Gershom again in the epic, yet his name bears on the destiny of his father and his people. The name consists of two Hebrew words, “ger sham,” meaning “a stranger there.” By bestowing it on his son, Moses stresses the complexity of his own fate: “I have been a stranger in a foreign land” (Exodus 2:22).

The Need to Sojourn

Dec 21, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayehi

The book of Genesis ends as it starts, with its lead characters in a state of exile. The existential human condition is to be out of place, far from home. Jacob’s clan no longer resides in the land promised to his father and grandfather. Yet the narrator makes it unmistakably clear that their final destination was not Egypt, but Canaan, the land that would eventually bear Jacob’s other name, Israel, the one who “strove with beings divine and human and prevailed” (Genesis 32:29).

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