Justice and Capital Punishment
Feb 21, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Mishpatim
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the spiritual leader of Palestinian Jewry in the disordered decades after the Bar Kokhba rebellion (132-135 C.E.), firmly believed that, “The world rests on three things: On justice, on truth and on peace, as it is written (Zechariah 8:16) ‘With truth, justice and peace shall you judge in your gates.'” (Pirkei Avot 1:18). His pronouncement was clearly a vision for reconstituting a society wrecked by the havoc of war. The precondition for a peaceful civil society was a system of administering justice on the basis of truth. A viable body politic needed a corpus of laws drafted equitably and applied fairly.
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Morality and the Mind
Oct 31, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Noah
But ten generations after Adam and Eve, we find God in despair over the unrelieved waywardness of humanity. Human depravity threatens to turn created order into primordial chaos. The Mishna (in Sanhedrin 10:3) declares the behavior of the generation of the flood to have been so reprehensible that it will be excluded for eternity from the world-to-come. Yet the Torah denies us any illustrative details, leaving a gap that begs for reader participation.
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The Day Begins with Night
Oct 25, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit
The Mishna, Judaism’s first legal compendium after the Bible, opens with a treatment of the proper times to recite the Shema in the evening and in the morning. The first line reads: “From when to when do we [liturgically] read the Shema in the evening.” The ensuing discussion in the Gemara (Mishna + Gemara = Talmud) asks why the Mishna doesn’t first take up the morning Shema. Since the day starts in the morning, wouldn’t this be the logical place to start? The answer of the Gemara is brief and far-reaching. The Mishna follows the order of creation. Six times the opening chapter of the Torah repeats the poetic refrain, “And there was evening and there was morning,” to signal the completion of a divine day’s work. The Torah seems to be going out of its way to establish the fact that the day does not begin with the crack of dawn, but rather with the setting of the sun (or halakhicly, with the appearance of three stars).
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The Process of Repentance
Oct 11, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Yom Kippur
A Palestinian preacher, Rabbi Alexandri, was wont to speak in the language of an evangelist: “Who desires life?” he would declaim, “Who desires life?” And quickly the crowds gathered, demanding, “Give us life!” At last, Rabbi Alexandri would begin by quoting two verses from Psalm 34: “Who is the person who is eager for life, who desires years of good fortune? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking guile (34:13-14).”
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Pluralism in Israel
Oct 2, 1997 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah
I have been asked often of late why I am spending so much time on the promotion of religious pluralism in Israel. Isn’t it a diversion from the continuity crisis in America, which is, after all, my main concern? The fact is that the two are linked. Israel is a large component of American Jewish identity. Were Israel to become irrelevant or off-putting for American Jews, our ability to withstand the forces of assimilation would be gravely impaired. As an unconditional Zionist, I would support Israel even if it became a benighted shtetl. But such a constricted and coercive state would hold little meaning for our grandchildren.
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Miriam’s Death
Jun 16, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Balak | Hukkat
Biblical narrative begs for reader participation. Time and again we come across a story short on context, background and human emotions, traces of an event barely recalled and crying out for elucidation. This week’s parasha contains a gem of an example.
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The Power of Tish’ah Be’av
Jul 17, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Devarim | Tishah Be'av
The Shabbat before Tisha b’Av (the 24-hour fast day on the ninth of Av) bears the name Shabbat Hazon (the Sabbath of Vision). It derives from the first word of the haftara: “The vision [hazon] of Isaiah son of Amoz that he beheld concerning Judah and Jerusalem… (Isaiah 1:1).” In English the translation conveys a note of irony, because the word “vision” tends to connote a depiction of beauty and inspiration, whereas Isaiah is delivering a stern reprimand of the hypocrisy and injustice of Judah in the late eighth century B.C.E. The Hebrew word “hazon”, in contrast, is neutral, stressing the divine source of the vision rather than what is depicted. The prophet is a seer by virtue of his access to an experience of revelation, irrespective of its content.
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The Power of Jewish History
Jul 10, 1999 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Masei | Mattot
No Jewish historian ever had a greater impact on his time than Simon Dubnov. He died at the hands of the Nazis in Riga in December 1941 at the age of 81. Because he was too frail and infirm to deport, they shot him in the ghetto. Those who witnessed the murder reported that Dubnov’s last words were, “Jews, write it down.” And they did, in Kovno, Warsaw, Lodz and elsewhere. In his spirit, Jews organized collective and clandestine efforts to record the many terrifying faces of the Final Solution. Unarmed and unaided, they found solace in assembling the evidence that would one day convict their mass murderers in the court of human history.
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