The Scapegoat At the heart of the service of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement was a ritual that has added a key word to the vocabulary of the West – scapegoat. On the most solemn day of the year, the High Priest – after confessing his own sins and those of his household […]
The Plague of Evil Speech The rabbis moralized the condition of tzara’at – often translated as leprosy – the subject that dominates last week’s sedra and this. It was, they said, a punishment rather than a medical condition. Their interpretation was based on the internal evidence of the Mosaic books themselves. Moses’ hand became leprous […]
The Sign of the Covenant The sedra of Tazria begins with the laws of childbirth and the command of circumcision, “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” (Lev. 12:3) Since the days of Abraham, this has been the sign, for males, of the covenant between God and the people He […]
The Light of Holiness The great moment has come. For seven days – beginning on the 23rd Adar – Moses had consecrated Aaron and the priests. Now, on Rosh Chodesh Nissan, the time has arrived for Aaron to begin his service, ministering to the people on behalf of G-d: It came to pass on the eighth […]
On Sacrifice Nothing in Judaism has proved more complex or internally controversial than the biblical approach to sacrifices. On the one hand they occupy a key position in the Mosaic books. Their laws are set out in great detail. No less significant is where these laws are to be found. As I have suggested elsewhere in […]
The Sins of a Leader Sometimes the Torah conveys its most profound ideas by a mere nuance, one that becomes apparent only by attentive listening. In an earlier study we saw how, in the long list of instructions about the making of various articles for the sanctuary, a simple shift in the verb from the […]
The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty Then Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the Lord has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the spirit of G-d, with wisdom, understanding and knowledge in all kinds of crafts – to […]
A Stiff-Necked People It is a moment of the very highest drama. The Israelites, a mere 40 days after the greatest revelation in history, have made a golden calf. G-d threatens to destroy them. Moses, exemplifying to the fullest degree the character of Israel as one who “wrestles with G-d and man” confronts both in […]
Do Clothes Make the Man? You shall bring forward your brother Aaron, with his sons from among the Israelites to serve me as priests – Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, Eleazar and Itamar, the sons of Aaron. You shall make only clothes for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. With these words a new phenomenon […]
The Making of an Ark As I have stressed many times in these studies, the Torah was meant to be listened to, not read. The eye can scan many lines at once; but listening is always a sequential, word-by-word process. The result is that the ear can sometimes hear a discrepancy that the eye misses. […]
