How to Renew a Nation The Talmud gives an ingenious reading to the line, “Moses commanded us a Torah, as a heritage of the congregation of Israel.” Noting that there are 613 commands, and that the numerical value of the word Torah is 611, it says that in fact Moses gave us 611 commands, while […]
Be Silent and Listen During our first Coronavirus lockdown, there was one question I was asked more than any other. What about prayer? Just when we needed it the most, we found ourselves unable to participate in tefillah be-tsibbur, public communal prayer. Our most sacred prayers, devarim she-bi-kedushah, are communal. They require a minyan. There was […]
Does Love Conquer All? Our parsha contains more laws than any other. Some of them have generated much study and debate, especially two at the beginning, the law of the captive woman and that of the “stubborn and rebellious son.” There is, however, one law that deserves much more attention than it has generally received, […]
A Sage is Greater than a Prophet In Shoftim, Moses speaks about the great institutions of Judaism; courts, judges, officers, Kings, Priests, Levites and Prophets. In the case of the Prophet, Moses says in the name of God: I will raise up a Prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself. I will […]
The Good Society Moses, having set out the prologue and preamble to the covenant and its broad guiding principles, now turns to the details, which occupy the greater part of the book of Devarim, from chapter 12 to chapter 26. But before he begins with the details, he states a proposition that is the most […]
The Covenant and the Love An interesting phrase appears at the end of last week’s parsha and at the beginning of this week’s, and they are the only places where it appears in the Torah. The phrase is ha-brit veha-chessed (Deuteronomy 7:9) or in this week’s parsha, et ha-brit ve-et ha-chessed (Deut. 7:12): Know therefore that the Lord your God […]
The Infinite Game The popular author and TED lecturer Simon Sinek recently published a book entitled The Infinite Game.[1] Based on the distinction first articulated by James P. Carse,[2] it is about the difference between two types of enterprise. One, a finite game, has a starting and ending point. It obeys rules, recognizes boundaries, and has winners and losers. […]
Followership In the last month of his life, Moses gathered the people. He instructed them about the laws they were to keep and reminded them of their history since the Exodus. That is the substance of the book of Devarim. Early in this process, he recalled the episode of the spies – the reason the […]
My Teacher: In Memoriam There are moments when Divine Providence touches you on the shoulder and makes you see a certain truth with blazing clarity. Let me share with you such a moment that happened to me this morning. For technical reasons, I have to write my essays for the Covenant & Conversation series many weeks in […]
Moral vs. Political Decisions The coronavirus pandemic raised a series of deep moral and political issues.[1] How far should governments go in seeking to prevent its spread? To what extent should it restrict people’s movements at the cost of violating their civil liberties? How far should it go in imposing a clampdown of businesses at […]
