Making Meaning From Chaos
Oct 5, 2007 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Bereishit
The opening words of B’reishit are exhilarating. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
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The Wisdom of the Wilderness
Nov 3, 2007 By Lisa Gelber | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah
When I lived in Seattle, I set aside one day each summer to visit Mount Rainier National Park and hike some trails there.
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The Many Qualities of Abram
Oct 12, 2007 By Daniel Nevins | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
Abram in the light; Abram in the dark. Abram with men at war; Abram with women at war.
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The Power of Collective Prayer
Jan 19, 2008 By Edward Feld | Commentary | Beshallah
There are powerful moments when a community comes together, moments in which each individual feels his or her energy directed to common purpose.
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The Attention Seeking Bush
Dec 29, 2007 By David M. Ackerman | Commentary | Shemot
A recent collection of one-liners and witticisms entitled 1,003 Great Things About Being Jewishcontains a section called “What Passersby Said About the Burning Bush.”
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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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Eating in the Wilderness
Sep 24, 2010 By Alan Cooper | Commentary | Sukkot
With Sukkot on my mind, the wilderness controversy prompted me to imagine what the Israelites’ experience of the wilderness might be like nowadays in contrast to biblical times. How much of the hardship of their forty-year trek from Egypt to Canaan might they have been spared if their four-wheel (instead of four-legged)-drive vehicles had been guided by GPS rather than meandering pillars of fire and cloud, or if the signage in the desert had amounted to more than a few indecipherable graffiti (even more obscure than Garden State Parkway markers)?
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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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