The Morality of Wealth
Nov 23, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Vayetzei
It is well known that the New Testament evinces a strong aversion to personal wealth. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declaims, “You cannot serve God and Money (Matthew 6:24).” Elsewhere he counsels a moral man of great means, “There is still one thing lacking: sell everything you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven (Luke 18:22).” When the man demurs, Jesus lets fly with a retort that has hurtled through the ages: “How hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18:24-25).”
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Leaving One’s Homeland
Oct 26, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Lekh Lekha
My family did not leave Germany till December 1938, some five weeks after the Nazis had destroyed Hanover’s magnificent synagogue on Kristallnacht. My father, the last rabbi of this once flourishing community, endured ten harrowing days in Buchenwald. Once we had to get out, my father was determined to leave Europe as well. We came to the States in March 1940, after a stop in England, which my father used to study English. He had just turned 41.
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Voices of the Past Influence the Present
Jan 25, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Beshallah
I like to daven from old prayer books, especially those awash in personal ties. The sheen of new ones, yet unused, leaves me cold. I am helped by the knowledge that their well-worn pages often brought others great comfort. I treasure two in particular: my father’s traditional siddur from which he davened when not in shul and my great aunt’s pocket siddur printed in Frankfurt in 1939 which was by her side in her concentration camp ordeal. Whenever I daven from these siddurim, I find myself warmed by the memory of loved ones whose lives ease my own quest for religious experience and meaning.
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Justice Is the New Counter-Culture
Jan 4, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemot
The book of Genesis ends on an Egyptian note: after his death, Joseph was embalmed and placed in a coffin to await burial in the land that God had promised his ancestors. Embalming is quintessentially Egyptian, one of a panoply of practices designed to obscure the reality of death. The whole religious tenor of Genesis bristles at the very idea; human life is but an extension of the earth: “For dust you are,” God tells a fallen Adam, “and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:19).” To facilitate this merger, Jews in Israel are still buried without benefit of a coffin.
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The Golden Calf and the Tabernacle
Feb 20, 2010 By Stephen A. Geller | Commentary | Terumah
Just before Parashat T’rumah begins, the divine Glory descends on Mount Sinai for six days, covering it with a cloud. On the seventh day God summons Moses, who enters the cloud, ascends the mountain and remains there for forty days and nights. The parashah itself begins with a divine command to take offerings (t’rumah) of precious metals, rare cloths, and other items to construct a mishkan, a tenting place (“tabernacle”) in the midst of Israel, together with all its sacred objects and vessels.
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The Power of the Tzadik
Oct 16, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah
Last month Columbia University Business School honored Aaron Feuerstein with its 1996 Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics. I attended the ceremony and was profoundly stirred.
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A New Purpose to the Creation Story
Oct 12, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
It happens every year: A fresh, slow reading of the Torah brings to light things I had not noticed before. Like Hagar lost in the wilderness with her son Ishmael, I failed to see the well which had always been there till God opened my eyes (Genesis 21:19). No chapter of the Torah is more familiar to me than the first, with its compressed and majestic story of the creation of the world. And yet here I sit astir with insights that eluded me till now.
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The Path Towards Perfection
Sep 13, 1996 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
When Louis Finkelstein was Chancellor of the Seminary and I was a rabbinical student, he would always start the opening breakfast of the year by reciting the verse from Second Isaiah (57:19): “Peace, peace unto those from afar and near.” consisting of but four words in Hebrew, the verse offered a ringing welcome to students new and old, those coming from abroad and those from nearby. Word was that the custom dated back to Solomon Schechter, whom Dr. Finkelstein revered.
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