וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם

All shall unite to do God's will with an open heart.

וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם

All shall unite to do God's will with an open heart.

Divrei Torah

3 10, 2019

Parashat Vayeilekh 5780

2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayeilekh
By Rabbi David Markus

Rosh Hashanah brings a spiritual lag between the year’s reboot and Torah’s reboot, like our northern latitude’s seasonal lag between sun angle and temperature. This spiritual lag raises two questions. First, shouldn’t Rosh Hashanah, which recalls the Yom Harat Olam (Creation’s birthday) of Genesis 1, therefore also be Simhat Torah to reboot the Torah cycle at the same time? Second, precisely because Simhat Torah lags behind by over three weeks, what spiritual meaning to make of this lag and this week’s Torah portion (Vayeilekh) that begins to fill it?

Talmud’s explanation for the lag is that Rosh Hashanah should follow only after we read Torah’s “curses” of consequence for disobedience (Megillah 31b). That’s Deuteronomic theology in a nutshell: spiritually speaking, we get what we deserve and we deserve what we get.

To me, Talmud’s premise doesn’t hold. Even if we accept Deuteronomic theology Read More >

Parashat Vayeilekh 57802022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00
26 09, 2019

Parashat Nitzavim 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Nitzavim
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover (’11)

In this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim, Moses speaks to the Israelites of the covenant between them and God. He emphasizes that every person in their society is a party to the covenant. Interestingly and perhaps incredibly, the non-Israelites who live among the Israelites are included as part of the covenant. We read repeatedly in the Torah that there is to be one law for the Israelite and the foreigner who lives among the Israelites, but usually it is not as clear that those foreigners are actually party to the covenant with God. But they are.

Moses says, “You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God—your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your women, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer—to enter into the covenant of the Eternal your Read More >

Parashat Nitzavim 57792022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00
20 09, 2019

Parashat Ki Tavo 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00

Coming of the Messiah: Sooner or Later?
A D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Tavo
By Rabbi Irwin Huberman (’10)

Perhaps no Jewish themed text has been more quoted in recent times than the 1971 theater production, Fiddler on the Roof.

In one of Fiddler’s closing scenes, as residents of the fictional town of Anatevka continue packing their belongings, one of the local characters, Mottel the Tailor, turns to the community’s rabbi and asks:

“Rabbi, we’ve been waiting for the Messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t now be a good time for him to come?”

To which the Rabbi replies: “I guess we’ll have to wait someplace else.”

The idea of a great national savior to either facilitate or preside over a perfected world has captured the imagination of Jews, among others, for centuries.

Allusions to this character appear in many prophetic books, most notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Hosea, Zachariah and Daniel.

As hardships continued to besiege the Jewish people over the Read More >

Parashat Ki Tavo 57792022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00
13 09, 2019

Parashat Ki Tetzei 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Tetzei
By Rabbi Bruce Alpert (’11)

As a rabbinical student, I attended a lecture taught by a sofer – a scribe – who demonstrated for us some of the tools he used in creating a Torah scroll. Among them was a sheet of parchment covered with ink blotches. The scribe showed us how, before beginning to work on the scroll, he would inscribe the name Amalek on this sheet and then blot it out. Thus did he honor (if not exactly fulfill) the commandments in this week’s Torah portion to both remember Amalek and erase the memory of him (Deuteronomy 25:17-19).

This exercise strikes me as a clever if incomplete way of dealing with apparently contradictory commandments. There are other places in Deuteronomy where we are asked to reconcile commandments or statements that are at odds with each other. Notably, two weeks ago, in Parashat Re’eh, we read first that “there shall be Read More >

Parashat Ki Tetzei 57792022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00
6 09, 2019

Parashat Shoftim 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Shoftim
By Cantor Sandy Horowitz (’14)

“Return to Me”. As I was folding my food-delivery bag I saw those printed words on the bottom. The actual words were “Return Me” (a message for the sake of sustainability) but that’s not what I saw; the mind is a funny thing sometimes. We are in the month of Elul, countdown to the High Holidays. Return to Me! Return to the One in Whose Guidance we trust; return to me, my most sacred authentic self. There are many ways to approach this period of preparation and personal reflection prior to the Days of Awe; a theme from Parashat Shoftim suggests one framework: that theme is justice.

This week’s Torah reading begins with God’s establishment of a legal structure, for the time when the Israelites will dwell in their new home across the Jordan. Judges and law enforcement officials are to be established in all the tribes, and Read More >

Parashat Shoftim 57792022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00
29 08, 2019

Parashat Re’eh 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00

There Never Was an Idolatrous City
A D’var Torah for Parashat Re’eh
By Rabbi Len Levin

“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.” (Deut. 11:26)

“I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life!” (Deut. 30:19)

It should be so simple. But life is rarely that simple.

The extreme of evil, which the Torah bids us shun, is idolatry (Deut. 13:2–19). What is idolatry? In rabbinic literature, idolatry is often equated with kafar ba-ikar —forsaking the fundamental principle of Judaism. In modern parlance, we have other ways of expressing supreme condemnation. “Disloyalty,” “treason,” and “self-hating Jew” come to mind. They carry the same valence of scorn, ostracism, and exclusion as “idolatry” in ancient discourse. Each is used implicitly to condemn an opponent as violating the fundamental principle of Judaism.

But there is more than one fundamental principle of Judaism.

In the Pesah Haggadah, we are told Read More >

Parashat Re’eh 57792022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00
23 08, 2019

Parashat Eikev 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Eikev
By Rabbi Isaac Mann

In the beginning of this week’s Torah reading we have two references to the manna (man in Hebrew) that sustained the Israelites in the desert for forty years as a test (nisayon) by God. In this essay I wish to explore what was the nature of this test and how it relates to us in practical terms.

In his long exhortation to B’nei Yisrael, Moses reminds them that God had them travel in the wilderness for the past forty years that “He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not. He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat … in order to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the Lord decrees” (Deut. 8:2-3). Read More >

Parashat Eikev 57792022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00
16 08, 2019

Parashat Va’ethanan 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00

 

A D’var Torah for Parashat Va’ethanan
By Rabbi David Markus

It’s fitting that the “Jewish greatest hits” of Parashat Va’ethanan come immediately after Tisha b’Av.

After our spiritual calendar’s lowest day, Torah promises that anyone who seeks God with whole heart and soul will find God exactly where we are – even in exile (Deut. 4:27-29). We stand again to hear the sacred utterances we call the Ten Commandments, recalling that together we stood at Sinai (Deut. 5:6-18). We receive the Shema of unity and the V’ahavta of a love that far transcends place – both “dwelling in [our] home and walking on [our] way” (Deut. 6:4-9).

Notice how the three Va’ethanan dimensions of content, place and time commingle spiritually.

The content is core Jewish theology. It’s our full-hearted search for God amidst a promise of real sacred encounter. (Heschel’s God in Search of Man, anyone?) It’s God pouring Self into Word becoming Read More >

Parashat Va’ethanan 57792022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00
9 08, 2019

Parashat Devarim 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Devarim
By Rabbi Heidi Hoover (’11)

Devarim is the first significant word of this week’s Torah portion, and therefore it gives the Torah portion its name. Because this week is the first portion in the fifth book of the Torah, Devarim is also the name of the whole book, which is called Deuteronomy in English, from the Greek. Devarim means “words,” and it’s an appropriate name for the book, because Moses spends the whole book of Deuteronomy making his last speech to the Israelites. At the end of it he dies and they prepare to go forward into the Promised Land.

In Judaism, words are very important. We are called the “People of the Book”—a book (books, really) full of words that give us the best information we have about what God wants from us. Words can create and destroy reputations. According to our tradition, God used words to create Read More >

Parashat Devarim 57792022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00
2 08, 2019

Parashat Matot-Masei 5779

2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00

A D’var Torah for Parashat Matot-Masei
By Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD

This week we have a double parashah: Matot-Masei. The name of Parashat Matot means staffs (as in big sticks). A staff is a sign of authority, and this parashah is full of reflections on tribal and patriarchal authority. As it moves through its various narratives, the parashah demonstrates how small acts of violence can lead to larger ones.

The parashah opens with an explanation of the practice of nedarim or vows. This was an important Israelite practice that was open to laypeople, not only clergy. The making and keeping of a vow—such as a vow to become a nazirite and not cut your hair, or Hannah’s vow to give Samuel to the Temple—was a kind of offering practice.  It was a way of showing devotion to God and often of showing gratitude for some personal abundance or miraculous intervention one had received.

However, this vowing practice was not equally open to Read More >

Parashat Matot-Masei 57792022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00
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