“Pharaoh hurriedly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I stand guilty before HASHEM your God and before you. Forgive my offense just this once, and plead [that your God] but remove this death from me.’… HASHEM caused a shift to a very strong west wind [so that] not a single locust remained in all the [...]
A man can’t get a break. Okay, a man occasionally gets a break, but they’re few and far between. Let me give it to you straight:
I’m in desperate need of finishing funds for the production of ShulShopper, the first component of Jew It Yourself set to launch in just under two weeks. I need your [...]
“And the blood on the houses where you are staying shall be a sign for you: when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” — Exodus 12:13
Why does God ask the Israelites to mark the doorposts of their [...]
This week we’re in parashat Bo. Here we read about the tenth plague, and about the Israelites’ departure from Egypt. Intriguingly, just before the climactic moment, there’s a fairly lengthy digression from narrative, in which Moses exhorts the Israelites to observe the annual commemoration of the exodus which hasn’t quite yet taken place.
And thus [...]
When one thinks of a leader, one often thinks of a person who inspires confidence in those being led, and who has earned the respect and trust of the people. Moses, the greatest leader in Jewish history, however, did not see himself as possessing these qualities. When God first appears to Moses from the [...]
“Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Go and sacrifice to your God within the land.’ But Moses replied, “It would not be right to do this, for what we sacrifice to HASHEM our God is a toevah ((Meaning of this Hebrew word is quite loaded, so for the duration of this piece it [...]
“See, I shall strike the water in the Nile with the rod that is in my hand, and it will be turned into blood; and the fish in the Nile will die. The Nile will stink so that the Egyptians will find it impossible to drink the water of the Nile.” —Exodus 7:17-18
Many [...]
The exodus from Egypt has symbolized the movement from servitude to freedom for generations. Whether for African-American slaves or for our own gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elders, the story resonates far beyond its Israelite particularity to any struggle for liberation.
There is another aspect to yetziat mitzraim (the Exodus from Egypt), though, beyond the [...]
This week we’re in parashat Vaera. In this portion God empowers Moses to bring plagues upon the Egyptians, and Pharaoh’s heart is repeatedly hardened so that the mighty ruler remains unable to understand his culpability or what he could do to change the situation.
This year, the part of the story that reaches out and grabs [...]
This week’s Torah portion — Shemot, the beginning of the book of the same name — contains a lot of good stories. One of them begins like this:
Now Moses, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, drove the flock into the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. [...]
Editor’s note: With the start of a new book of the Torah, Radical Torah would like to welcome another new contributor, Ben Pachano, who has written for the Earth First! Journal and No Compromise magazine . Ben currently works with Root Force . The following dvar Torah is the first of a four part [...]
“The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God.” — Exodus 2:23
“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come…” — Dr. Martin Luther King
The book of Exodus opens, famously, with a vivid depiction of the Israelites’ oppression [...]
V’eleh shemot b’nei yisrael ha’baim mitzraima…
And these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt. Every man and his household came with Jacob: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naftali, Gad and Asher. And it was that every soul who came from the loins of Jacob totaled 70 [...]
Editor’s note: This week we have another new contributor. Elyssa Joy Auster, a Hebrew College rabbinical student, spent summer 2006 in Chicago doing social justice work with other rabbinical students through theJewish Council on Urban Affairs. She received her B.A. from Brandeis Universityhas a Masters of Theology from Boston University. Elyssa believes [...]