The Custom that Refused to Die There’s an enthralling story about the Ten Commandments and the role they played in Jewish worship and the synagogue. It begins with a little-known fact. There was a time when there were not three paragraphs in the prayer we call the Shema, but four. The Mishnah in Tamid (5:1) […]
Justice or Peace? The sedra of Yitro, which contains the account of the greatest Divine revelation in history, at Mount Sinai, begins on a note that is human, all too human. Yitro, priest of Midian, has come to see how his son-in-law Moses and the people he leads are faring. It begins by telling us […]
The Universality of Wisdom The structure of Shemot chapters 18-20 is little short of astonishing. In 19-20, we read of the moment in which the Israelites received their constitution as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. It was a unique encounter. Not only was the epiphany at Mount Sinai never repeated in Jewish […]
A Holy Nation Immediately prior to the great revelation at Mount Sinai, G-d instructs Moses as to the nature of the covenant he is proposing to make with the children of Israel. On their willing acceptance of these terms, all else will depend. In the course of this preamble, the Torah articulates what, in hindsight, could […]
The Politics of Revelation The revelation at Mount Sinai – the central episode not only of the parsha of Yitro, but of Judaism as a whole – was unique in the religious history of mankind. Other faiths (Christianity and Islam) have claimed to be religions of revelation, but in both cases the revelation of which […]
