How Leaders Fail As we have seen in both Vayetse and Vaera, leadership is marked by failure. It is the recovery that is the true measure of a leader. Leaders can fail for two kinds of reason. The first is external. The time may not be right. The conditions may be unfavorable. There may be […]
Moses Annuls a Vow Kol Nidre, the prayer said at the beginning of Yom Kippur, is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, perhaps the strangest text ever to capture the religious imagination. First, it is not a prayer at all. It is not even a confession. It is a dry legal formula for the annulment […]
A Stiff-Necked People It is a moment of the very highest drama. The Israelites, a mere forty days after the greatest revelation in history, have made an idol, a Golden Calf. God threatens to destroy them. Moses, exemplifying to the fullest degree the character of Israel as one who “wrestles with God and man,” confronts […]
Anger: Its Uses and Abuses Comparing two of the most famous events in the Torah, we face what seems like a glaring contradiction. In this week’s parsha, Moses on the mountain is told by God to go down to the people. They have made a golden calf. Moses descends, holding in his hands the holiest […]
The Sabbath: First Day or Last? In the immensely lengthy and detailed account of the making of the Tabernacle, the Torah tells the story twice, first (Ex. 25:1 – 31:17) as Divine instruction, then (Chs. 35 – 40) as human implementation. In both cases, the construction of the building is juxtaposed to the command of […]
The Closeness of God The more I study the Torah, the more conscious I become of the immense mystery of Exodus 33. This is the chapter set in the middle of the Golden Calf narrative, between chapter 32 describing the sin and its consequences, and chapter 34, God’s revelation to Moses of the “Thirteen attributes […]
Can there be Compassion without Justice? At the height of the drama of the Golden Calf a vivid and enigmatic scene takes place. Moses has secured forgiveness for the people. But now, on Mount Sinai yet again, he does more. He asks God to be with the people. He asks Him to “teach me Your […]
How Leaders Fail Leaders can fail for two kinds of reason. The first is external. The time may not be right. The conditions may be unfavorable. There may be no one on the other side to talk to. When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked what was the most difficult thing he had to […]
Two Types of Religious Encounter Framing the epic events of this week’s sedra are two objects – the two sets of tablets, the first given before, the second after, the sin of the golden calf. Of the first, we read: The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of G-d, engraved […]
The Birth of a New Freedom Witnessing the birth of a new idea is a little like watching the birth of a galaxy through the Hubble Space Telescope. We can witness just such an event in a famous rabbinical commentary to a key verse in this week’s parsha. The way to see it is to […]
