These are anxious times. Many people are facing significant changes in their lives and the long-standing institutions that help inform their lives and lend them a sense of security. People often feel insecure regarding their safety, their finances and the…
Tag: Jewish
B’reishit – Facing Our Other Side, East of Eden
As we begin to explore this story of humankind outside the Garden of Eden, we like Cain should be uncomfortable with our first encounter being fratricide. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, we need to admit that we walk…
Nitsavim – Choose Life
Listen to an audio version God is dead! Or so some would say, such as Richard Rubinstein the esteemed former professor of religion at University of Florida and Bridgeport University. As a leading cultural analyst, and a most prominent…
Matot – A Place of Refuge
This week’s Torah portion contains a theme that in the ancient world was peculiar to the religion of Israel – the compassion, care and grace of their patron God. A historically popular approach to theology is to bifurcate of the…
Pinchas – Proper Enthusiasm
Listen to an audio version There are always two unseen guests at every bris, neither has been specifically invited, yet the spirit of each is evoked. Of course Elijah is the first unseen guest as he often is…
Chukat – Three Children of Amram, Two Strange Cows, and A Perpetual Living Stream
Listen to an audio version Parashat Chukat is among the most enigmatic in all of Torah. While it gives closure to the lives of Moses siblings, it opens three new mysteries in the fabric of Israel’s, story, a peculiar ordinance,…
Korach – You Say You Want a Revolution
Do you ever have, as one children’s book would describe it, a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day”? Well, Moses sure did. In fact, it must have seemed to him like he had fourteen thousand six hundred days…
Shelach Lecha – Monsters, Giants and Other Formidable Obstacles
In the spring of 2002 I went to an art exhibit that was featuring a grouping of pictures painted by a good friend who was beginning the process of leaving the safety of a career as a commercial artist…
B’halot’kha – Salvation On Trial
This week’s parasha will introduce a theme that will characterize much of the remaining narrative of Bamidbar. Chapters 11-25 contain a series of refusals on the part of Israel to accept authority. In chapter 12 even Miriam challenges Moses’ authority.…
Behar – It All Belongs to the Lord
From its outset Torah is the story of Israel and the Holy One whose name the nation would bear. From the very beginning of the history that is recorded in the Torah, humanity is called to bear collectively the image…