Listen to an audio version We tend to think of people; who lived long before us as primitive and less intelligent. Yet, contemporary Americans have made the alternative medicine industry a multi-billion-dollar throwback to the ancient craft of herb…
Tag: Torah
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 – A Rock Feels No Joy
Listen to an audio version I Am A Rock by Paul Simon A winter’s day in a deep and dark December I am alone gazing from my window to the ground below The earth’s beneath a freshly fallen silent…
Lech Lecha – The Syntax of Silence
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…
A More Intimate Gathering
Listen to an audio version When I was a boy growing up in New York our family gatherings were like a scene out of the Barry Levinson movie Avalon. On Thanksgiving and Chanukah especially our get-togethers would involve not only…
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…
Sukkot – Finding Shelter in a Transient World
Sukkot recalls that freedom came as the result of pitching tents over 14,600 days and honors the 43,000 meals prepared in the dessert. But more importantly Sukkot reminds us that God is everywhere and undermines the idolatry of rootedness. This…
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…
Ki Tavo – Do Not Neglect Nor Transgress
Listen to an audio version …lo avarti mi’mitzvoteycha v’lo sha’chachti “I have neither transgressed nor neglected any of your commandments” (Devarim 26:13). This is the pledge that God commanded the children of Israel to declare every third year after removing…
Ki Teitze – Making Sense of the “Texts of Terror”
If we are to be perfectly honest, much of the law codes reorganized and restated in the book of Devarim seem oddly archaic, highly impractical, and at times, even disturbingly unethical! This week’s parashah, Ki Teitze is chocked full of…