The Past Leading to the Present
Oct 30, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera
The unusual Hebrew phrase “lekh lekha” occurs only twice in the entire Tanakh: at the beginning of last week’s parasha when God instructs Abraham to leave Haran, and this week, when God asks him to offer up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice (Genesis 12:1; 22:2).
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Visiting the Sick
Nov 15, 2003 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayera
During World War II and the Korean War, my father served as the civilian Jewish chaplain at the sprawling army hospital at Valley Forge, not far from his pulpit in Pottstown. Every Wednesday he would walk its endless halls visiting wounded Jewish servicemen. On Thursday evenings he returned to conduct a prayer service for them accompanied by a few women from the synagogue sisterhood who had prepared a collation of kosher deli. No part of my father’s rabbinate gave him more satisfaction because no Jews ever needed him more than this pitiful refuse of military carnage. Their numbers were large and their condition often shattering. My father assuaged their pain with warmth, wisdom and faith. In 1918, as a teenager in the German army on the Western Front, he had witnessed the devastating brutality of mechanized warfare and the chaos of defeat. That experience brought him to choose the rabbinate while his empathy for victims of misfortune made him an ideal pastor. He turned the mitzvah of bikkur holim (visiting the sick) into a fine art.
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Examining the Word Moriah
Nov 11, 2006 By Robert Harris | Commentary | Vayera
Years ago, in a national television program called Laugh In (yes, I lived during the Stone Age — the Rolling Stone Age. Never mind.), a comedian lampooned the song “They Called the Wind Moriah” from the Broadway show Paint Your Wagon.
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Sitting in God’s Presence
Nov 6, 2009 By Abigail Treu | Commentary | Text Study | Vayera
What do we find ourselves doing when God’s Presence suddenly appears to us?
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Sustaining Our Hearts
Nov 12, 2011 By Andrew Shugerman | Commentary | Text Study | Vayera
On its face, this midrash may seem to state the obvious: that eating bread gives one energy. After all, a look at our food packaging today reveals the ingredients and nutrients contained in any given product. This text, however, teaches that not all nourishment comes in physical form. The deceptively simple statement that “bread strengthens the heart” and the prooftexts that follow it actually provide a subtle commentary to the notion that “man does not live on bread alone” (Deut. 8:3); indeed, we derive sustenance at least as much from our gratitude for the company we keep and for the blessing of hospitality.
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Subverting Abraham As a Knight of Faith
Oct 26, 2007 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Vayera
In a world in which so much violence and pain are caused in the name of religion, how can we read the story of “the Binding of Isaac” as anything but what Phyllis Trible would call a “text of terror”?
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The Original Walking Man
Nov 15, 2008 By David M. Ackerman | Commentary | Vayera
On the topic of walking, the rock ‘n’ roll references come fast and furious. From Lou Reed’s teasing nudge to “take a walk on the wild side,” to the Rolling Stones’ and Peter Tosh’s advice to “keep on walking and don’t look back,” and from the Grateful Dead’s reflection on “walking around Grosvenor Square,” which leads to the revelatory insight that “once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right,” to James Taylor’s evocation of the “walking man,” who “doesn’t do nothing at all,” but walk, our popular culture sees the very basic human act of walking in very personal and highly symbolic terms.
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Is Seeing Believing?
Oct 23, 2010 By Deborah Miller | Commentary | Vayera
Is seeing believing? Or, to put it another way, is seeing necessary for believing? I am not asking a theological question, but a psychological/social/emotional one.
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