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Abraham’s Nature and the Path of the People
This week’s torah portion, Lech L’cha begins with God telling Abraham to leave his homeland and go, “to a place which I will show you.” According to the Ramban God took Avrom traveling for a long time from land to land. Why? As Rashi says, “in order to make your nature, (your personality), known in…
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Exile, Manna, and the Journey to Self-Realization
In this week’s torah portion, Ekev, Moshe reviews some of the people’s time in the desert over the last 40 years and speaks several times about the mannah they ate in the desert. When Moshe speaks about the mannah though, he connects it in our parsha, more than once to pain. “Remember the long way…
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Awakening to God: The Journey of Seeing and Changing
This week’s parsha is our first introduction to Avrohom, the first Jew. We know very little about him except what God tells him: “Go for yourself, from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I…
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From Manna to Harvest: Remembering God in Our Success
It all begins with an idea.
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Building the Jewish Future: Kesher Israel’s Mission of Connection
“And God said to Avram, go for yourself from your land, your birthplace, and from the house of your father, to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. And…
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Becoming a Vessel
This week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha in which God tells Abraham to leave his land, his family and his birthplace, and “go to a land which I will show you.” Why, ask the commentaries, doesn’t God just tell him where he is being led; to the Land of Israel? Why all the mystery? The Sefat…
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The Power of Letting Go in Community Building
This week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha, in which God tells Abraham to leave his land, his family and his birthplace, and “go to a land which I will show you.” Why, ask the commentaries, doesn’t God just tell him where he is being led – to the Land of Israel? Why all the mystery?…
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A Reflection on Free Will and the Role of Perspective
The ten plagues in last week’s and this week’s Torah portions present us with the age-old philosophical dilemma: How can God punish Pharaoh if God has hardened Pharaoh’s heart? Justice dictates that reward and punishment can only be for violations or merits which are the product of one’s free will. Maimonides takes the Torah at…
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A Contrast Between the Mayans and the Jews
This past week Sara and I were in Mexico touring the Mayan ruins; royal houses, city centers, ancient ball courts, and temples, spanning over a thousand years from the 5th century BCE until the 10th century CE. Though there is not much rain during half the year and these ancient cities were not generally built…
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How Humility Shapes Our Relationship with God
This week’s parsha, Ekev, begins with Moshe’s words of warning to the Jewish People: V’haya ekev tishmaun, “And it will be, ekev, (“since” or “because”) you will heed these ordinances and keep them, that the Lord, your God, will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers.” The word…
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The Power of Hands and Heart in Blessing
This week’s Parsha, Shemini, tells the story of what happened on the eighth day of the Tabernacl’s existence, the day following the seven day process of inaugurating the Kohanim, the Priests, to prepare them for Temple service. On this eighth day, one of the first acts as Kohen Gadol, High Priest, that Aaron performs…
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Sukkot 2020
The Talmud writes: “Rabbi Eliezer says: “Just as you can not fulfill your mitzvah of lulav on the first day of Sukkot with someone else’s lulav, so too you may not fulfill your obligation of Sukkah in someone else’s sukkah.” The Rabbis say: Although a person does not fulfill his obligation on the first day…
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Miracles or Relationship? Finding God Within Us
In this week’s parsha, Bishalach, the Jewish people witness the splitting of the sea, manna from heaven and water from a rock, and yet at the end of the parsha they seemingly have the audacity to ask, “Hayesh Hashem bikirbenu, im ayin?,” “Is God in our midst or not?” (Exodus 17:7). God clearly is doing…
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Finding Passion and Creativity in Jewish Prayer
Is prayer an essential part of Jewish observance? On the one hand organized thrice daily prayer is something fairly “new” in Judaism, instituted to take the place of the sacrifices which were lost with the destruction of the Temple. On the other hand prayer goes all the way back to our ancestors who…
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Opening Your Hand: The Real Impact of Tzedakah in This World
“If there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must surely open your hand and lend him sufficient for their needs,…
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Hidden Treasure: Spiritual Growth in a Time of Isolation
This Shabbat we read the double portion of Tazria and Metzora which discuss the different kinds of impurity resulting from Tzaraat, a Biblical skin disease seen by our sages as a physical manifestation of spiritual malady. The Torah commands that if Tzaraat affects a house, the house must first be shut up for seven days…
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Charity, Reward, and the Power of Our Actions
Perhaps the greatest religious conflict, especially for Jews, is that between God’s infiniteness and God’s intimacy. God is radically One, as the mystics put it, Ayn od milvado, “There is nothing besides God.” So impossible and dangerous is it to anthropomorphize God, to take the risk of limiting God or pretending to know God’s essence,…