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The Laws of Noah
Oct 24, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah
As the story of No·ah opens, the Torah returns to the word “elohim” for “God:” “When God saw how corrupt the earth was… God said to No·ah… (Genesis 6:12-13).” And with few exceptions (Genesis 7:1,5, 16; 8:21), this remains the term for God throughout. It is the same noun used by the Torah in chapter one to depict the creation of the cosmos. Unlike the four letter personal name of God – YHVH – (rendered as “the Lord” in the Jewish Publication Society’s translation of the Bible), elohim is a plural form and a generic term for deity that can also serve to refer to pagan gods.
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Between Moses and Genesis
Oct 17, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
For the rabbis, the gap between the death of Moses at the end of the Torah and the creation of Adam and Eve at the beginning is bridged by divine compassion. The Torah closes as it opens, with an act of kindness, in order to establish the doing of good deeds (gemilut hasadim) as the supreme value of Judaism. Our exemplar is none other than God, who in each instance is moved by human plight.
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Nourishing the Soul
Sep 30, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yom Kippur
To fast for a day is not what makes Yom Kippur difficult for us. Fasting gets easier with age. The real challenge of Yom Kippur is to do without the distractions to which we are addicted. Ours is a society that abhors silence. We jog with earphones, run with music, fly with movies and even entertain company with the television droning in the background.
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Taking a Spiritual Inventory
Sep 21, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur
The twentieth-century American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, known for her enlarged and stylized flower studies, once said: “Nobody sees a flower really – it is so small – we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Whatever else our High Holy Days might be, they are surely about helping us sharpen our vision. If I had to reduce the drama and choreography, the prayer and music of this protracted season to a single, encompassing goal it would be to enable us to catch another glimpse of what has grown dim or to discover an insight beyond our ken. And because seeing afresh cannot be hurried, we slow down and withdraw, gradually diminishing the bombardment of distractions.
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Life From the Ashes
Aug 1, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Devarim | Tishah Be'av
How did Judaism manage to survive the destruction of its central sanctuary? According to the book of Deuteronomy, which we always begin to read on the Shabbat before Tish’ah Be’av, it was to be the only link between heaven and earth. All sacrifices were to be offered there and no place else. The exclusive cult restricted to a single Temple seemed to reinforce the fragile belief in a single, omnipotent God. And even if Solomon’s Temple never fully eradicated the plethora of local altars and sanctuaries, it did claim to be the repository of God’s holy name and the place where God was most readily accessible to human supplication. Yet, unwittingly, the monotheism of Solomon’s court increased the vulnerability of Israelite religion. The destruction of his Temple in 586 BCE could have ruptured the ties between God and Israel. By then the exiled tribes of the Northern Kingdom, crushed by Assyria in 721 BCE, were well on their way to oblivion.
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Remembering the Holocaust on Tisha B’Av
Jul 25, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Masei | Mattot | Tishah Be'av
My father liked to record in the books he bought the date of purchase. Each book became a marker in the unfolding of his life. Though long gone, my father and I meet often on the pages of the many books from his library that are interspersed in mine. Every year at this time, I take off the shelf his slender Hebrew edition of the Order of Lamentations for Tisha b’Av to ready myself for the fast day. I never fail to be arrested by the date stamped on its first page beneath my father’s name: January 12, 1933. Hitler came to power as Germany’s Chancellor exactly 18 days later on January 30. The pall of Tisha b’Av descended in mid–winter that year and would not lift till the spring of 1945.
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Being Jewish at Yale
Jun 27, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah
The Talmud condemns the rebellion by Korah and company against Moses as the prime example of “a controversy not for Heaven’s sake.” Tarnished by impure motives, his challenge brings no lasting benefit. And the Torah confirms that reading. Korah is a Levite bent on leveling the religious hierarchy set up by God to govern the Tabernacle. He rejects the special status accorded his clan to service the cult “You have gone too far,” he declaims to Moses. “For all the community are holy… Why then do you raise yourself above the Lord’s congregation (Numbers 163)?” Behind the facade of democratic rhetoric lurks a grab for power.
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What Hands Teach Us about Religion
Jun 13, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
My father liked to study hands, not to predict the future but to judge character. An amateur graphologist, he had concluded that our hands are an even more revealing extension of our personality than our handwriting. The interest was a great ice–breaker. He would often ask guests visiting our home for the first time to show him their hands, palms down and held together in a triangle. After a brief gaze, he would offer a few comments about their personality type, talents and values. He was rarely way off. Though I failed to acquire his expertise, I remained ever sensitive to the expressiveness of hands.
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Who Counts?
May 30, 1998 By Anne Lapidus Lerner | Commentary | Bemidbar
There was tension in the air that night in 1974 as members of Manhattan’s Tifereth Israel – Town and Village Synagogue filled the social hall, eager to join battle on the critical question of whether or not we would count women in the minyan. For those now accustomed to including women, the practice in about 85% of Conservative synagogues today, it may be hard to imagine the emotion that crackled through the air. Rumors about what different people would say were rife. Everyone knew that the rabbi, Stephen C. Lerner, was in favor of changing the policy. Some said that his own father, a respected member of the shul, disagreed with him. As the rabbi’s wife, I was concerned when my father–in–law raised his hand to speak. “When I was a boy growing up in the Ukraine,” said he with a bit of an accent, “and they asked the local peasants how many people had come to the town meeting, they would say twenty people and ten Jews. I think that we should stop counting that way.” The congregation voted overwhelmingly in favor of including women in the minyan.
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Ethics in Business
May 23, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behar | Behukkotai
When in Israel last, I needed to buy a pair of tefillin as a bar–mitzva gift. Deep inside Mea Shearim, my son and I finally found the shop that had been recommended to us, a hole in the wall on the main street, that specialized in tefillin. The space was musty and untidy and cluttered with religious books and artifacts. Behind the counter presided an elderly and diminutive couple, whose vigor belied their years. They bounded from one end of the counter to the other to serve an unending flow of customers.
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Israel’s Destiny
May 16, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Emor | Lag Ba'omer
Jews mark the period between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot by the counting of the omer. For a period of 49 days, beginning on 16 Nisan, for us in the diaspora the night of the second Seder, we count each day at the evening service (the start of a new day in the Jewish calendar) in terms of the days and weeks that have passed. This brief ceremony opens with the verse in this week’s parasha that sets forth the prescription: “And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation – the day after the sabbath – you shall count off seven weeks. They must be complete: you must count until the day after the seventh week – fifty days (Leviticus 23:15–16).”
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Love for All
May 9, 1998 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Aharei Mot | Kedoshim
This Shabbat we will read two Torah portions, Aharei Mot and K’doshim . The topics covered in these parashiyot range from the ritual requirement of sending a scapegoat out to the desert on Yom Kippur, to a list of forbidden sexual relationships, to fundamental social legislation, reminiscent somewhat of the Ten Commandments.
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Jews and Medicine
May 2, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Metzora | Tazria
Our family seders always border on a medical convention. My sister, Hanna, who did not live to celebrate Passover with us this year, had three children, all of whom are doctors and all of whom married doctors (well, one is married to a veterinarian, but that’s close enough). The pattern is not an accident. Hanna was by training a nurse and her first husband, Calvin, was an obstetrician. In the mid-1950s, they settled in Vineland, New Jersey. Over the next 20 years, before his untimely death in 1974, he delivered half the babies born there, including the three Schorsch children. For both Hanna and Calvin, medicine was a calling which saturated the conversation around the dinner table. Their children grew up in the loving presence of medical paragons.
Read MoreSacred Distinctions
Apr 28, 1998 By Diane Sharon | Commentary | Shemini
This week’s parashah is overflowing with mystery—first, in Leviticus 10, the sudden deaths of Aaron’s sons in the very midst of dedicating the Mishkan and the Aaronid priesthood to its service, and then, in chapter 11, the extensive categories of clean and unclean animals that may or may not be eaten. Both of these texts stand as a challenge to the notion of a rational religion, to the idea that God is reasonable, a divinity who may be predicted, and also to the idea that the way to worship God, the way to live a sacred life, is based on logical premises. In spite of these challenges, the history of interpretation of this parashah shows a striving for the rational. On the deaths of Aaron’s sons, Rashi cites rabbinic efforts to identify the sins that Nadab and Abihu must have committed that would warrant their incendiary punishment—these differ widely, emphasizing the elliptical nature of this text. And on the food prohibitions, Maimondies, known as Rambam, the twelth-century neo-classical philosopher who is known for his rational approach to Judaism, read into the food laws of Leviticus a logical underpinning based on sound hygiene.
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Seeds of Jewish Identity
Apr 10, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Sukkot
The house is back to normal. The flock of children and grandchildren which descended upon us for the start of the new year left after Yom Kippur. It was not the entire Schorsch family this time, but enough to thrill us and exhaust us. Missing were the Berkeley contingent with their brood of three children, just returned from two years in Israel. The twins from Chicago are now 2 1/2 and talking up a storm, while our granddaughter from Brooklyn has just passed the one-year mark and charms everyone with a smile and a giggle. Visits have a way of turning cousins into friends.
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The Sin of Remaining Silent
Mar 28, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Rosh Hodesh | Vayikra
We don’t admit errors easily. There is probably nothing more difficult for us to say than “I’m sorry.” Each time we bring ourselves to do it, we acknowledge that we are less than perfect and far from infallible. Resistance wells up from the very depth of our being. How often have we been scene to the following Nietzschian dialogue: “‘I have done that?’ asks my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride and remains inexorable. Eventually memory yields.” Without a measure of self-awareness and courage, truth invariably falls prey to our psychological needs.
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Why a Temple?
Mar 21, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pekudei | Vayak-hel
The final two readings this week, which close the book of Exodus, tell of the actual construction of the Tabernacle. In a leap year, with its additional month, we would have devoted one Shabbat to each parasha and read for the haftara a selection pertaining to Solomon’s construction of the First Temple. In fact, the two haftarot are sequential: I Kings 7:40-50 for Vayakhel and I Kings 7:51-8:21 for Pekuday. Thus the synagogue naturally associated the completion of Moses’s mobile sanctuary with the completion of Solomon’s permanent Temple in Jerusalem.
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What Did We Receive at Sinai?
Mar 14, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa
At the end of the Torah reading in the synagogue, the scroll is spread and lifted so that everyone might see its hand-written script. Simultaneously, the congregation affirms out loud: “This is the Torah that Moses set before the people Israel; the Torah given by God, through Moses” (a composite of two verses, Deuteronomy 4:44 and a phrase repeated several times in the book of Numbers, 4:37,45; 9:23; 10:13). Having just finished a liturgical reenactment of the original national experience at Mount Sinai, we declare the text of this scroll to be the repository of that revelation.
Read MoreAdvice for Moses, Advice for Life
Feb 14, 1998 By Ora Horn Prouser | Commentary | Yitro
In the portion of the Torah most celebrated for the Decalogue it includes, Moses receives wise counsel from an unexpected source. His father-in-law, Yitro, after seeing Moses sitting for long hours, judging and settling claims among the Israelites, objects to his son-in-law’s administrative style.
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Empathy for the Other
Feb 7, 1998 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beshallah | Pesah
It took God but six days to create the world; it took my mother at least twice that long to prepare for Passover. At the seder on the first night she would often doze contentedly from a mild case of exhaustion. Everything sparkled; nothing was out of place. The beauty of the table and the aromas coming from the kitchen attested to her toil and artistry. By turning ritual into a fine art, she enhanced the presence of God at our family seder.
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