The Parable of the Tribes From beginning to end, Genesis chapter 34 tells a terrifying story. Dina, Jacob’s daughter – the only Jewish daughter mentioned in the entire patriarchal narrative – leaves the safety of home to go out to “look at the daughters of the land.” (Gen. 34:1) She is raped and abducted by a local prince, […]
Time for Love, Time for Justice Judaism is supremely a religion of love, three loves: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deut. 6:5) You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Lev. 19:18) And You shall love the stranger, for you were […]
Was Jacob Right to Take the Blessings? Was Jacob right to take Esau’s blessing in disguise? Was he right to deceive his father and to take from his brother the blessing Isaac sought to give him? Was Rebecca right in conceiving the plan in the first place and encouraging Jacob to carry it out? These […]
The Binding of Isaac “Take your son, your only son, the one you love—Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” (Gen. 22:2) Thus begins one of the most famous episodes in the Torah, but also one of the most morally problematic. The conventional reading […]
How Perfect were the Matriarchs and Patriarchs? In an extraordinary series of observations on this week’s parsha, Ramban (Nahmanides, 1194 – 1270) delivers harsh criticisms of Abraham and Sarah. The first has to do with Abraham’s decision to leave the land of Canaan and go to Egypt because “there was a famine in the land.” […]
Beyond Nature Are we naturally good or naturally bad? On this, great minds have argued for a very long time indeed. Hobbes believed that we have naturally “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in Death.”[1] We are bad, but governments and police can help limit the harm we do. Rousseau […]
Staying Young Moses did not fade. That is the accolade the Torah gives him at the end of his long and eventful life: Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were undimmed and his natural force unabated. (Deut. 34:7) Somehow Moses defied the law of entropy that states that […]
A Leader’s Call to Responsibility When words take wing, they modulate into song. That is what they do here in Ha’azinu as Moses, with the Angel of Death already in sight, prepares to take leave of this life. Never before had he spoken with such passion. His language is vivid, even violent. He wants his final words […]
