The Responsibility of Holding Office
Sep 10, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shofetim
Rabbi Hananiah, the Deputy High Priest, taught: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if people did not fear it, they would swallow each other alive” (Pirkei Avot 3:2, trans. Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals, 264).
Read More
Vanquishment Through the Written Word
Sep 3, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Re'eh
For a book that purports to be but a reprise of the other books of the Torah, Deuteronomy abounds with puzzling discrepancies.
Read More
Judaism’s Activist Spirit
Aug 27, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Eikev
In his early Zionist tract, Rome and Jerusalem (1862), Moses Hess declaimed “that the Jewish religion is, above all, Jewish patriotism.”
Read More
On Writing Torah Commentaries
Jul 9, 2005 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Hukkat
As I begin my twentieth and final year as Chancellor, I am mindful of the cautionary verse from Proverbs, wisely inserted by our sages in the morning liturgy: “Many are the designs of the human heart, but in the end, it is God’s plan that will prevail.”
Read More
The Spiritual Significance of the Sacrificial Cult
Mar 29, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shabbat Parah | Tzav
Our Hebrew Scripture is a library of books with many voices, a bracing diversity of literary genres and religious opinions. This is a good week to remind ourselves of that noteworthy fact as we struggle through a double dosage of cultic prescriptions. Our parasha stipulates the tasks incumbent on the priests in administering the sacrifices that ordinary Israelites might offer at the Tabernacle. On top of that, because this Shabbat is the third of the four special Shabbatot leading up to Passover, we are treated to an additional reading dealing with the potion prepared from the ashes of an unblemished red heifer for the purpose of ritual purification.
Read More
A Feminist Mandate
Apr 8, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayak-hel
The recent conference in New York City on “Feminism and Orthodoxy” heralds a major escalation in the confrontation between Jewishly well-educated Orthodox feminists and a bitterly defensive rabbinic establishment. The word on the street in the weeks before the conference was that it would be a brief one, implying that the two topics had nothing in common. But reality proved the cynics wrong. Nearly a thousand Orthodox women of all stripes convened for two days of study, prayer and protest to challenge the gender inequities that abound in contemporary Orthodoxy. The plight of women stranded without benefit of a Jewish divorce from their husbands evoked an added measure of outrage.
Read More
Holy Light: Remembering Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld
Feb 22, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Tetzavveh
This past week at the Seminary, we commemorated the first Yahrzeit of Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld, whose young lives were extinguished one year ago (February 25, 1996) in Jerusalem by the bomb of a Hamas terrorist. Matthew was a second–year rabbinical student spending the year studying intensively at the Seminary’s Beit Midrash, and Sara, who had just graduated Barnard, was about to become his fiancee. We used the occasion of their Yahrzeit to dedicate in their memory a spacious room where Seminary students gather each day till late at night to study Talmud in small groups, havruta–style.
Read More
A Thought on Physician-Assisted Suicide
Feb 15, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Terumah
This week Shabbat follows by a day the date assigned by the Talmud (the 7th of Adar) for the death of Moses. The Torah leaves us entirely in the dark as to when Moses died. We are told only at the very end of Deuteronomy that Moses died alone atop Mount Nebo, looking out over the Promised Land. Though advanced in years, Moses did not die of old age: “Moses was 120 years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated (34:7).” That is, he died suddenly, without illness and suffering, or in the words of Rashi, by the touch of a divine kiss (on the basis of the phrase “al pi adonai;” literally, “by the mouth of God” – 34:5).
Read More
