Moments of Transition

Sep 13, 2003 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Liminal moments are often marked by meaningful ceremonies. A baby is welcomed into the covenant of the Jewish people through a simhat bat or brit milah ceremony. Children celebrate becoming a bar or bat mitzvah by being called to the Torah. Marriage is marked by a ritual of kiddushin (sanctification) under the huppah. So too are such moments ritualized in the annual Jewish calendar. One need only think of the coming High Holidays — Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — to be reminded of the special rituals that transition us into the new year (the sounding of the shofar, tashlikh, and the ascetic laws in observance of Yom Kippur).

“The World Belongs to God”

Aug 24, 2002 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Ki Tavo | Pesah | Rosh Hashanah

The month of Elul is a time for preparation for the High Holy Days. Some industrious hosts and hostesses are already making tzimmes and putting it in the freezer. Other kinds of preparations are being made, too– studying, thinking about and discussing the themes and meanings of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur so that these holidays are not just repetitions of prior years. Even our weekly Torah readings, seemingly disconnected from anything to do with the High Holy Days, can be read through Elul eyeglasses.

Fear or Love?

Sep 4, 2004 By JTS Alumni | Commentary | Ki Tavo

By Rabbi Howard Stecker (RS’ 92)

Given the complex nature of religious life, how can we most effectively communicate religious instruction? This question occupies rabbis, educators and parents alike. While the Torah contains no explicit discussion of educational methodology, the attempt to transmit religious teachings goes back to our earliest history and is the central theme of the series of parshiyot before the High Holidays.

Torah and Livelihood

Sep 20, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

Among the cascade of curses that pour forth in Parashat Ki Tavo, one in particular grabs my attention this year, not because of the vividness of its brutality (others surpass it), but because of its later application in a talmudic dispute. Our reading of a text is often a function of what we have on our mind. I refer to a fairly generic articulation of the fate of national subjugation: “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, you shall have to serve – in hunger and thirst, naked and lacking everything – the enemies whom the Lord will let loose against you… (Deuteronomy 28:47–48). The phrase “ve–avadeta et oyvekha – you shall have to serve your enemies” is the link to a discussion in the Talmud about the issue of just how much of our lives are we expected to devote to the study of Torah.

“Into the Woods” and into Elul

Aug 24, 2002 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Ki Tavo

“Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom, lived a young maiden, a sad young lad, and a childless bakery” thus opens the story that develops into Stephen Sondheim’s current revival on Broadway, Into the Woods. Cleverly weaving our classic fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, Sondheim composes a fable with classic, yet new significance. He begins with the foundation of the moral lessons of the children’s fairy tales like Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk, and builds upon them by watching as their characters interact with one another.

The Language of the Jewish People

Sep 24, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

The owner of the mid-nineteenth-century farmhouse we rented for August has a well-tended orchard of diverse fruit trees.

An Uneasy Relationship with the God of History

Sep 16, 2000 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

The Hebrew adjective for being ungrateful is kefui tovah. The idiom stresses the willfulness of the sentiment. The situation calls for an expression of gratitude and we squelch the impulse. The word kefui is related to the word kefiah as in the phrase current in contemporary Israeli politics, kefiah datit – religious coercion, both forms deriving from the root kafah, to suppress. The language makes it clear that saying thanks does not come naturally. We are reluctant to acknowledge a favor that might reveal our need or shortcoming. And so the Torah institutionalizes a thanksgiving ritual, though an unusual one.

Hebrew’s Answer to Life’s Deepest Riddle

Sep 13, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tavo

The Bible’s most famous riddle was the brainchild of Samson. “Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet” (Judges 14:14). Samson posed it on the occasion of his seven-day wedding feast to thirty young Philistine men who came to celebrate his marriage to one of their own. On the last day, the young men responded gleefully: “What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?” Dismayed, Samson accused them of coercing his bride: “Had you not plowed with my heifer, you would not have guessed my riddle.” And indeed, threatened by them with savage revenge, she had wheedled the answer out of Samson, only to betray him, exactly as Delilah would do later in his life.