Looking back on my childhood, I often feel like I emerged out of two totally different worlds. I grew up in the “free to be you and me,” question-authority, communal-living, people’s republic of Berkeley in the late 1970’s. At the same time, my sister had become bal teshuvah (a non-Orthodox Jew who adopts Orthodox standards [...]
Despite their many flaws, the Founding Fathers are generally considered heroes by most Americans. They are justly honored for producing what remains a cornerstone of contemporary human rights:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are [...]
Although this week’s parsha, named for what appears to be its main character, begins with Moshe and Korach, it actually ends with Aaron and the establishment of the eternal priesthood. Why does this shift take place? Perhaps the explanation lies in a small detail that appears in Bamidbar 18:19. God tells Aaron that in [...]
This week’s Torah portion is a doozy (surely that’s the technical term) — parashat Korach. Korach, whose challenge to Moses’ authority resulted in the earth opening to swallow him and his followers. In the whole Torah only five portions are named after people, and this is one of them.
For many contemporary Jews, [...]
I’m one of those Jews who went to a Hebrew school where we never studied Numbers (Bamidbar), or most of Deuteronomy (Devarim) for that matter. Hebrew school always ended in May, leaving the lonely second half of Numbers and most of Deuteronomy to the devices of those more devoted to reading the Torah or [...]
In this week’s parshah, Sh’lach, Moshe sends twelve men to investigate the land of Canaan. Moshe charges them, “Go and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they dwell [...]
At the very end of this week’s Torah portion, Sh’lakh, there’s a fascinating juxtaposition of passages. First, four dramatic verses concerning an episode in which the Israelites, in the wilderness, come across a man gathering wood on Shabbat. He is placed in custody, and God instructs Moses to have him put to death, [...]
Today, one need only glance at the newspaper or listen with half an ear to the evening news to find dozens of reasons to cry. It seems that everywhere we look, the world is filled with suffering and pain.
The biblical book of Eicha (Lamentations), which describes the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE is [...]
I’ve always harbored a suspicion that Moses’ sister, the feminist icon Miriam, was a lesbian. Or that at least if she lived today, she would have fit in swimmingly in certain lesbian circles. Don’t get me wrong, nothing in the Torah suggests an intimate relationship between Miriam and another woman. But what about that moment [...]
What exactly is it that we Jews are trying to do?
Against considerable odds, the Jewish people have survived for thousands of years, and sometimes it seems that’s all we’re trying to do — hold on in order to pass the venerable baton of tradition from one generation to the next. The task of the living [...]
The story of Miriam being struck by snow-white scales is a veritable soap opera. Miriam and Aaron, we learn, are jealous of Moses because he married a Cushite woman, and because Moses has the Divine ear in a way that his siblings do not. “Aren’t we special too?” Aaron and Miriam ask.
God is incensed by [...]
Many people who live a “religious life,” or aspire to one, pray that God will appear to them in a cacophonous moment of revelation. Every morning in many synagogues, particularly in Israel, Jews hope for a glimpse of the divine presence when they dramatically reenact the Priestly Blessing from Parshat Naso:
May GOD bless you, and [...]
This week’s Torah portion, Naso, features one of the most fascinatingly bizarre rulesets in Torah: the ritual to be performed if a husband suspects his wife of adultery.
The sotah ritual is strangely magical. The priest mixes “sacral water” and earth from the floor of the Tabernacle. The woman suspected of adultery must bare her [...]