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On Korah and Spinoza

Jul 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah

When I was a rambunctious kid growing up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the name of Benedict de Spinoza came to me as easily as that of Ted Williams or Stan Musial or Sid Luckman. If the latter three were among my childhood heroes, the former meant a great deal to my father. He spoke often of Spinoza’s grand conception of God as the sum total of all that exists. Indeed, body and mind were but two attributes of God’s infinite nature. There were countless others which we would never know. For my father, Spinoza represented the fullest and finest expression of Judaism’s historic quest to understand the endless diversity of existence in monotheistic terms. On many a Shabbat I was treated to a discourse that eluded the grasp of my inattentive mind. I remember only the stirring intensity of his fascination. Spinoza provided a haven in which the rational bent of my father’s mind and the religious hunger of his heart could both find comfort.

Biblical Espionage

Jun 24, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shelah Lekha | Tishah Be'av

The story of the twelve spies is well-known and straightforward. As Israel approaches the Promised Land from the south, God instructs Moses to assemble a band of spies, one prominent man from each tribe to measure the strength of its inhabitants: “Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell, good or bad? Are the towns they live in, open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is it wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land” (Numbers 13:18-20).

A Backstory for Moses

Jun 17, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha

For all the grit and grandeur of his character, Moses could never be the biographical subject of a commercially successful book. We don’t know enough about his private life. New books on Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King sell because they slake our thirst for the salacious. By illuminating their private lives, their authors presume to deepen our understanding of their noteworthy public careers. But by now the quest has become an unedifying end in itself.

Universal Service of God

Jun 3, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bemidbar

Though the Jerusalem Temple is long gone, time has not erased the threefold division of ancient Israel into Kohanim, Leviim and Yisraelim. Ritual, as it so often does, helps to preserve collective memory. In many synagogues, the first two aliyot to the Torah are still given to a Kohen and a Levi. Yisraelim, who constitute the majority of us, are not called to the Torah until the third aliyah. On Passover the three matzot that bedeck our seder plates are named (from top to bottom) Kohen, Levi and Yisrael. In old cemeteries, a pair of hands symbolic of the priestly benediction often mark the tombstone of a Kohen, while the grave of a Levi whose task was to pour water over the hands of the priests before the recitation of the blessing, is signified by a tilted pitcher.

The Man Who Challenged Exile

May 31, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behukkotai

The greatest Jewish historian in America of the last generation was Salo Wittmayer Baron, who died in 1989 at the age of 94. Born in Galicia and trained in Vienna, he became the first professor of Jewish history at an American university in 1930, when invited to join the prestigious history department of Columbia University. With unmatched erudition and energy, Baron wrote authoritatively on nearly every aspect of Jewish history. In 1937 he published a highly original three–volume synthesis of all of Jewish history, which he called by the balanced title of A Social and Religious History of the Jews. After the Holocaust he transformed it into a second edition that would grow to 18 volumes by the time of his death, without going beyond the middle of the seventeenth century.

An Ancient Social Ethic

May 20, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behar

One winter Friday evening after services, I happened to walk home in the company of a talkative Seminary student. As we made our way down Broadway, we passed a weary and emaciated man whispering for some spare change. On Shabbat I pay less heed to such heartrending pleas because I don’t have any money with me. Neither did my young companion. Yet he politely interrupted our animated conversation and asked the man whether he would like a sandwich. When he responded with evident joy that he would, the student pulled out a neatly wrapped sandwich from his plastic bag and gave it to him. Obviously, unlike me, the student did not allow Shabbat to prevent him from aiding the homeless who crowd the sidewalks of Broadway in the midst of the academic acropolis known as Morningside Heights. Though we met no more homeless before we parted company, for all I knew my companion still had another sandwich or two left in his bag to feed the hungry. His unobtrusive display of forethought and compassion stirred me deeply, as it filled me with pride.

How We Strengthen Each Other

May 17, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Behukkotai

From the messianic vision of a society where divine sovereignty preserves economic equality for all, we descend to the mundane subject of funding the sanctuary. The book of Leviticus ends where it began, with the Tabernacle as a sacred institution that needs to be maintained annually. It is a subject that arouses my sympathy. I can readily testify that the holy lacks the capacity to sustain itself. It depends on the commitment and generosity of many in society who appreciate its unique value.

To Save a Life

May 6, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Kedoshim

Passover this year was not a festival of freedom for Alisa Flatow of West Orange, New Jersey. The Brandeis junior was rendered brain dead by a piece of shrapnel on April 9, when a Palestinian suicide bomber drove his van of explosives into a busload of Israelis near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip. But before her father Stephen allowed his daughter to be taken off the respirator in Beersheva Hospital, he snatched the last measure of life from her limp body: her undamaged organs and corneas were removed “as a lasting contribution to the people of Israel.”

“After the Death…”

Apr 29, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Aharei Mot

The name of this week’s parasha, “After the Death,” captures our state of mind as Americans. In the wake of the carnage in Oklahoma City we fear acts of terrorism more than acts of nature. An earthquake or hurricane can be devastating, but never vicious. As it smashes our pride, an act of nature fills us with awe, not loathing or revulsion. In one horrifying episode, we realize again the stark truth that for all of humanity’s daunting conquests of nature, we have barely begun to conquer ourselves. Americans are as vulnerable to the demented fury of the allegedly aggrieved as anyone else.

On the Sanctification of Time

Apr 8, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Metzora

For as long as I knew her, my mother suffered from psoriasis. Her elbows were scaly and her shoulders covered with a patina of dandruff. A close look at her hair would show the lesions on her head from which it came. Psoriasis is not life-threatening, merely discomforting and unsightly. It is related to nerves as much as anything and can flare up with stress.

The Sanctity of the Torah

Apr 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Hahodesh | Tazria

It is not often that we read from three sifrei Torah on one Shabbat. But this week Shabbat displays a bit of the pageantry we associate with Simhat Torah because of the convergence of three sacred moments: the regular parasha for the week, Tazri·a; the first day of the new month of Nisan (Rosh Hodesh); and the fourth of the four special Sabbaths before Passover, Shabbat ha-Hodesh. So in addition to the sefer Torah forTazri·a, we take out two other scrolls for the readings from Numbers (28:9-15) and Exodus (12:1-20) appropriate for the occasions. To read from three books of the Torah out of the same scroll would be unwieldy and time-consuming (a lot of holy rolling!). Hence three scrolls, to avoid burdening the congregation with distracting delays.

When Religious Leadership Fails

Mar 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemini

“Joy waits around for no one. The person who celebrates today may not be celebrating tomorrow, nor the person who is afflicted today may not be afflicted tomorrow.” This is the sober comment of the midrash on Aaron’s tragedy. At the culmination of his installation as priest of the Tabernacle, his two sons are struck down by God’s wrath. The same divine fire which had just descended from above to consume Aaron’s altar offering, a public sign of God’s favor, returns to kill Nadab and Abihu when they commit a cultic infraction. What began with exaltation ends in grief (Leviticus 9:23-24; 10:1-3).

A New Ark of the Covenant

Mar 4, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Pekudei

The heart of Israel’s ornate Tabernacle in the wilderness was the Ark of the Covenant. From above the extended wings of the two cherubim affixed on top of the Ark, God’s voice would emanate to address Moses. It constituted the holiest spot in the Tabernacle, and was approached by the High Priest but once a year on Yom Kippur. Moreover, the Ark was the first part of the sanctuary that Moses was instructed to build. After inviting Israel to make “Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8),” God immediately continues, “They shall make an ark of acacia wood… (Exodus 25:10).”

Why Leviticus?

Mar 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayikra

A couple of years ago, a commercial publisher put out a new popular, abridged edition of the Bible. Among the omissions was the entire book of Leviticus, whose preoccupation with arcane ritual allegedly holds no interest for the modern reader. I suspect that many of us would agree. We prefer prophets to priests, ethics to ritual and verbal prayer to animal sacrifices. Our egalitarian sensibility is likewise offended by hierarchical religion.

The Seeds of Democracy

Feb 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayak-hel

The Hertz Humash often confronts us with bones of contention long buried. Written in the interwar period by the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Joseph H. Hertz, the first graduate of the Seminary in 1894, it resonates with the echoes of Christian biases and Jewish anxieties stirred up by the Jewish struggle for equal rights in the nineteenth century. A fine example is to be found in this week’s parasha on Exodus 35:34, where Rabbi Hertz writes: “The opinion is often expressed that there is no art in Judaism; that the Jew lacks the aesthetic sense; and that this is largely due to the influence of the Second Commandment which prohibited plastic art in Israel (p. 376).”

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 Secret of Judaism’s Vibrancy

Jan 21, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yitro

The insignia for a Jewish chaplain in the armed forces of the United States is the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, worn prominently on both lapels. My father, the immigrant rabbi, wore his with pride when he was a civilian chaplain at the Valley Forge Army Hospital during World War Two and the Korean War, as did I when I served a two-year stint as an army chaplain from 1962-64 at Fort Dix and in Korea. The insignia has always appealed to me because of what it represents: the core experience of God by Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. What could be more central? This is the event that determines the nature of Judaism and the destiny of its adherents

Hearing Revelation

Dec 24, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemot

The Torah devotes nearly 40 verses to the exchange between God and Moses at the burning bush. No divine-human encounter of a personal nature gets similar coverage. The wealth of material gives us an idea of how revelation works, then and now. For the Torah is more than a collection of one-time religious experiences beyond our ken. God’s voice continues to fill the universe. We need to relearn how to hear it.

Israel Divided

Dec 10, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayiggash

As you know, the Haftarah is the prophetic selection with which we take leave from the weekly parasha. The word is a noun which means, “to bring (the Torah reading) to a close.” We do not depart from the Torah abruptly, but gradually with a final reading from the Prophets, chanted from a printed book rather than a handwritten scroll. We withdraw from the realm of the sacred slowly. The prophetic passage chosen always relates to the content of the parasha for that week.

The Burden of Peoplehood

Dec 4, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Miketz | Hanukkah

Sold into slavery at the age of 17, Joseph attained the post of vizier of Egypt by the time he was 30. That would have been a remarkable feat by a native; for a foreigner, it simply boggles the mind. Only Pharaoh stood between him and absolute power. Joseph had deciphered Pharaoh’s premonition of catastrophe and urged decisive action on a national scale. And Pharaoh rewarded the messenger by appointing him to carry out his own counsel. He also bestowed upon him all the trappings of power, including an arranged marriage with the daughter of an Egyptian priest.

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