The Altar at Home
Mar 20, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayikra
I have a deeply personal attachment to parashat Vayikra. Many years ago it was the parasha on which my son celebrated his bar-mitzva. Though he attended a day school, I prepared him for the occasion as my father had once prepared me, and as my son will one day prepare his children. For half a year, I would corral him regularly to teach him the Torah portion according to the eastern European cantillation common in American and the haftara according to the uncommon German cantillation on which I was raised.
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Our Journey in the Wilderness
Jun 4, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shelah Lekha
The history of Israel in the wilderness is a textbook of religious wisdom. Perhaps the most basic principle it teaches is that miracles don’t create believers. We are inclined to think that given what the people had witnessed in Egypt and at the Reed Sea and before Mt. Sinai, they would have acquired an unmovable faith in God. And that is precisely what the Torah asserts after God rescued Israel at the Reed Sea, in a passage that we still recite daily in our morning prayers.
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How We See God
May 28, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beha'alotekha
The choosing of an epitaph for someone we love is excruciatingly difficult. That is, in part, because our minds are no longer stocked with literary associations and, in part, because we are humbled by the task of identifying the essence of a human life. Mercifully, the unveiling of the tombstone is customarily delayed till the first Yahrzeit, which gives us time to choose wisely.
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Va-yikra’s Lessons for Conservative Jews
Mar 16, 2002 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Vayikra
This week marks the beginning of the third book of the Torah, Vayikra, alternately referred to in Hebrew as Torat Kohanim, the ‘teaching of the priests’, and in Latin as Leviticus. Modern scholars and traditional commentators alike highlight the positioning of Vayikra , literally at the heart of the Five Book of Moses. Such placement of Vayikra speaks to the centrality of its teachings in the Israelite experience, especially as they pertained to the sacrificial cult practiced by the Israelites in the First and Second Temple periods.
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Living Judaism As a Work of Art
May 14, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bemidbar | Shavuot
When I was a youngster, Shavuot was the time for confirmation, a ceremony concocted in the nineteenth century along Protestant lines to replace bar-mitzvah and enhance synagogue attendance on the holiday, for Shavuot never enjoyed the popularity of Pesah. But a brief two days, it flits by without the elaborate ritual drama or stirring universal message of Pesah. The synagogue is its primary venue and there is little for us to do at home, except to enjoy the restful interlude with family and friends.
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Transcending “Soulless Piety”
Mar 2, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ki Tissa
Writing in the week of my father’s yahrzeit, I am drawn to reflect again on some of the spiritual heirlooms he left behind. One of my favorites is the piquant term “soulless piety” which he coined to describe an all too common phenomenon that results when ritual observance loses its emotional charge and we find ourselves just going through the motions. Judaism is a religion predicated on behavior rather than belief; compliance outranks spontaneity in its scale of values.
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Reconciling the Generations
Mar 26, 1994 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Hagadol | Tzav | Pesah
My father died in 1982, some five weeks before Passover. Till then I had never conducted a seder, except for the two years I spent as an army chaplain at Fort Dix, New Jersey and Taigu, South Korea. The custom in the Schorsch family since time immemorial had been to celebrate the seders in the home of my parents. Each Passover my older sister and I, with spouses and children, would happily converge on that sacred space to hear our father sing, read, and talk his way through the Haggadah and to savor our mother’s delicious Passover menu. My mother died the following year and my sister and I, awash in memories, are now the older generation. Ten years later our families are larger and more widely dispersed and the rendezvous changes, but the tradition of an inclusive family seder has not unraveled. I have assumed my father’s mantle.
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“A Place for Your Stuff.”
Feb 16, 2002 By Joshua Heller | Commentary | Terumah
I’ve always appreciated a monologue by George Carlin on the topic of “a place for your stuff.” The comedian describes the way we accumulate physical things in our homes and basements. When we travel, we take a smaller version of our “stuff” with us.
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