On Parents and Teachers Just beneath the surface of today’s this week’s parsha is an exceptionally poignant story. It occurs in the context of Moses’ prayer that God appoint a successor as leader of the Jewish people. One hint is given in the words of God to Moses, “After you have seen you also will […]
The Hardest Word to Hear The story of Bilaam, the pagan prophet, begins with a bewildering set of non-sequiturs – a sequence of events that seems to have no logic. First, the background. The Israelites are approaching the end of their forty years in the wilderness. Already they have fought and won wars against Sihon […]
Why Was Moses Not Destined to Enter the Land? It is one of the most perplexing, even disturbing, passages in the Torah. Moses the faithful shepherd, who has led the Israelites for forty years, is told that he will not live to cross the Jordan and enter the promised land. No one has cast a […]
Power versus Influence The Korach rebellion was an unholy alliance of individuals and groups unhappy with Moses’ leadership. There was Korach himself, a member of the tribe of Levi, angry (according to Rashi) that he had not been given a more prominent role. There were the Reubenites, Datan and Aviram, who resented the fact that […]
What Counts? This week’s sedra begins with a continuation of the census begun in last week’s – the act that gives the entire book its English name, the book of “Numbers.” Two things, though, are puzzling. The first is the very act of numbering the people. Jewish tradition conveys two quite different, apparently contradictory, attitudes […]
The Chronological Imagination I want, in this study, to look at one of Judaism’s most distinctive and least understood characteristics – the chronological imagination. The modern world was shaped by four revolutions, the English, the American, the French and the Russian. Two – the English and American – were inspired by the Hebrew Bible which […]
Faith as a Journey In its account of the festivals of the Jewish year, this week’s parsha contains the following statement: You shall dwell in thatched huts for seven days. Everyone included in Israel must live in such thatched huts. This is so that future generations will know that I caused the Israelites to live […]
Of Love and Hate At the center of the mosaic books is Vayikra. At the center of Vayikra is the “holiness code” (chapter 19) with its momentous call, “You shall be holy because I, the Lord your G-d, am holy.” And at the center of chapter 19 is a brief paragraph which, by its positioning, […]
Holiness and Childbirth The sidrot of Tazria and Metsorah contain laws which are among the most difficult to understand. They are about conditions of “impurity” arising from the fact that we are physical beings, embodied souls, and hence exposed to (in Hamlet’s words) “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Though we have […]
Fire: Holy and Unholy The shock is immense. For several weeks and many chapters – the longest prelude in the Torah – we have read of the preparations for the moment at which G-d would bring His presence to rest in the midst of the people. Five sedrot (Terumah, Tetzaveh, Ki Tissa, Vayakhel and Pekudei) describe the […]
