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A King Who Does Not Know Joseph: Lessons on Jewish Loyalty and Persecution
In the preceding Torah portions we have seen Joseph exercise his power with great loyalty on behalf of Pharaoh and Egypt. He not only saves everyone from famine, but in the process makes Pharaoh even richer by using the stored grain to bring all agricultural land under the ownership of Pharaoh and render all of…
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Yom Kippur
Two Goats that Teach the Central Lesson of Yom Kippur In ancient times Yom Kippur was quite a different experience than it is for us today. The entire Jewish people would gather at the Temple in Jerusalem to watch and listen as the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, performed the Temple service, and on this…
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Rosh Hashanah
The Talmud states: “We anoint kings next to a spring of water so that their kingship should continue to give forth like a spring…Rabbi Ammi said, “If one is about to engage in business and wishes to know whether he will succeed or not, let him get a rooster and feed it; if it grows…
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How Each Generation Contributes to the Rebuilding
The Talmud says, “ Any generation for which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is as if it was destroyed in their days.” The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, asks how this could be so? There have been many generations in which there were very righteous people, is the Talmud saying that…
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The Transformational Leadership of Miriam
This past Saturday night I had the privilege of learning about the Torah portion with the children of Kesher Israel at our monthly Parent-Child learning program. We looked at leadership in this week’s parsha. Moshe is one kind of leader -0his character of leadership seems to be concern for individuals and sticking up for…
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Connecting to Our Ancestors in Challenging Times
We have been here before,- on the seder night of the first Pesach, in Egypt, the Jewish people could not leave their houses for fear of the threat on the outside. Though it’s true that they had each other in groups that first Pesach, how many times in Jewish history were Jews eating matzah hiding…
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Tisha B’Av as a Path to Redemption
This week we begin the nine days, an intensive time of mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the exile from Israel. Rabbi Solovetchik pointed out that this process of national mourning proceeds in the opposite direction to personal mourning. Personal mourning of the passing of a loved one begins with very…
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Using the Pandemic to Reconnect with What Truly Matters
We are surrounded by mortality -here in the country we considered safely above epidemics, and in the world at large. This kind of widespread death shocks us from the comfort of our everyday denial of death. The human being’s constant background denial of their own mortality allows them to go on day to day, to…
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Tefillin on Chol HaMoed and the Unity of the Jewish People
With regard to wearing tefillin on chol hamoed (intermediate days of the festivals) the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) states (OC 31:2): “On Chol HaMoed it is prohibited to wear tefillin for the same reason as on shabbat or a holiday, namely that Chol HaMoed is an ot, a “sign” (rendering tefillin, which is also…
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Learning from the Bene Israel of India
“Rabbi, what will you do about the rain?” Exhausted and in shock from my first exposure to the realities of the swarming, squalid city of Mumbai, then called Bombay, I stared back, perplexed and concerned. “Don’t you know, Rabbi, there is a drought here in Maharashtra.” Their thoughts, though unsaid, were loud and clear: “We…
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Elevating the Physical Through Shabbat
“Noah is Shabbat” – Tikuney Zohar, 138b The seventh Rebbe of Lubavitch, the great Tzadik, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson taught (in Maamar Bati L’gani) that the place of God’s most intense dwelling in this world is the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, and the beams which hold up the Mishkan are called in Hebrew, “kerashim.” He said…
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The Power of Prayer
This week’s Torah portion is Noah. Many of the commentaries on this portion focus on Prayer. But what does prayer have to do with Noah and the flood? The answer I think lies in a question that is often asked about Noah: Was he really a righteous man compared to Abraham, or only righteous compared…
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From Sinai to the Tabernacle
In this week’s torah portion, Tzav, the torah continues its description from last week of the sacrifices and their rituals. For us who live in the current period of time in the Western world animal sacrifice is fairly foreign and seems in many respects barbaric. To us perhaps reading about the sacrifices in…
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Bridging the Divide
We have just finished the High Holidays, culminating with Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Over the course of the holiday of Sukkot, we offer 70 bulls in the Temple, corresponding to the 70 nations. On the 8th day, Shemini Atzeret, we bring one bull for the Jewish people. Jews are not xenophobic. We believe that the…
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The Jewish Perspective on Truth and Governance
The Shulchan Aruch, Code of Jewish Law, states that if three identical pieces of meat, one which is unkosher and two which are kosher, become mixed together in one container, we are permitted to eat all of them. We know that one of these pieces is not kosher, and yet as we pull each one…
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Understanding Sacrifices: Perspectives from Torah and Tradition
In this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, the torah continues its description from last week of the sacrifices and their rituals. For us who live in the current period of time in the Western world animal sacrifice is fairly foreign and seems in many respects barbaric. To us perhaps reading about the sacrifices in the Torah…
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Breaking Free from Narrow Thinking
Our era, ironically, has been called the age of communication. When I was young, making a phone call from Israel to the United States cost a great deal and was not simple, so one might speak to their relatives abroad only rarely. When my oldest was in Israel about 5 years ago calling was…