One of the saddest transactions in the entire Bible takes place in this week’s Torah portion. Esau comes home exhausted and hungry, finds his brother Jacob cooking a pot of stew, and asks for something to eat. Jacob, ever the…
Category: Torah Commentaries
Chaye Sarah – The Ongoing Miracle of a Life Well Lived
Listen to an audio version It is noteworthy that this week’s portion, which is entitled, Chaye Sarah, the life of Sarah, actually chronicles the matriarch’s death and burial, and her husband’s contemplative mourning. It begins though with a one sentence…
Vayera – Our Hope Is Not Lost
We live in a time when hope can be difficult to sustain. Political divisions have become so bitter that people who once spoke with one another now struggle to share a table. Families are fractured, and relatives sometimes go…
Lech Lecha – Faithfulness in the Shadow of War
In April 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, I attended a forum featuring four Nobel Peace laureates. One of the speakers was Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and tireless advocate for human dignity. Drawing upon his experience…
Noach – The Trouble with Being Human; Dominion, Compassion, and the Discipline of Restraint
What does it mean to be human? The Torah gives us a remarkable answer: we are created in the image of God and entrusted with dominion over the earth. But what does that dominion mean? Does it give us license…
B’reishit – Finding Ourselves, East of Eden
As we begin to explore this story of humankind outside the Garden of Eden, we, like Kayin, should be uncomfortable that our first encounter is with fratricide. Yet, if we are honest, we need to admit that we walk…
Shemini Atzeret to Simchat Torah – The Party Is Just Beginning:
When I was growing up in New York, Thanksgiving and Chanukah were occasions for bringing the family together. We lived in a small, five-and-a-half-room apartment, but somehow, we managed to squeeze in relatives and friends, folding tables, and enough food…
Sukkot – Shelter in a Temporal World
We live in a world that constantly reminds us of its impermanence. Everything we build, everything we possess, and even the bodies in which we live are temporary. Yet much of human life is devoted to creating permanence and security.…
Yom Kippur Is Not Judgment Day
There is something about Yom Kippur that can make us uncomfortable. We come into this day knowing that we are going to have to face ourselves. We will confess our sins and recite the Al Chet, acknowledging the many ways…
Rosh Hashanah – Back to the Future
JMortonPhoto.com & OtoGodfrey.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Back to the Future Rosh Hashanah gives us something that is increasingly difficult to find in modern life: a sacred pause. We spend much of the year moving forward at a…