The AJR Center for Judaism and Science has an annual competition for the best student D’var Torah infused with science. Click here to view the entries that have won our לדעת חכמה (Lada’at Hokhmah) Award.
Parashat Bemidbar – 5785
May 28, 2025
Rabbi Susan Elkodsi (AJR '15)
A D’var Torah for Parashat Bemidbar By Rabbi Susan Elkodsi (AJR ’15) A few years ago, for Mother’s Day, my kids gave me a DNA-testing kit from Ancestry.com. Not surprisingly, the results came back as 99% Ashkenazi Jewish with 1% various other ethnicities, depending on some algorithm or something. It was fascinating to start receiving DNA matches, including my daughter (whew!), connecting with some long-lost relatives, and learning about some distant ones whom I never knew existed. I get as far back as my great-grandparents, and then the history appears to end. My husband, whose father was part of the Egyptian Karaite community, has information going back 12 or 13 generations because excellent records have been kept and kept up. Now imagine being an Israelite born into Egyptian slavery! The book of Bemidbar/Numbers/In the Wilderness opens by telling us that the Israelites are in their second year following the Exodus from Egypt (1:1). While we...
Parashat Bemidbar 5784
June 3, 2024
Dr. Yakir Englander
Anyone who has spent several days in the desert knows the nighttime there—the human need to stay close to the nearby camp.
Parashat Bemidbar 5783
May 16, 2023
Cantor Robin Anne Joseph (’96)
“The straight line belongs to men, the curved one to God” ~ Antoni Gaudi, architect In case we missed it, we begin this book of the Torah with a reminder: we’re BaMidbar—in the desert. Still. But why? What are the Israelites still doing in the desert? After one year and one month, couldn’t they make it through the desert any faster? It really shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to get from Egypt to Israel, even you are traveling on foot with hundreds of thousands of people and a lot of livestock. But not to worry; at the beginning of Parashat BeMidbar, we seem to be at an inflection point. The Israelites must surely be thinking that their travels are coming to an end. As they ceremoniously take stock of the able-bodied men from among their tribes who will form an army to battle any peoples who might try to stop...
Parashat Bemidbar 5782
June 3, 2022
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah The Torah is for Everyone A D’var Torah for Parashat Bemidbar By Rabbi Marc Rudolph (’04) Before the Sinai Desert was returned to Egypt in the Peace Treaty of 1978, it was possible to take a bus directly from Tel Aviv to the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, Sharm el Sheik. I boarded that bus alone on my Spring Break of 1973 when I spent a year in Israel. I intended to camp out on the beach and snorkel on the reefs of the Red Sea off Sharm El Sheik. There were only a few of us on that bus, including a Bedouin man. We traveled for hours through seemingly interminable and vast expanses of wilderness. When we think of “wilderness” in North America, we imagine tracts of virgin forests with wild rivers flowing through them untouched by human hands. We think of nature “untamed” by...
Parashat Bemidbar 5781
May 14, 2021
Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah A D’var Torah for Parashat Bemidbar By Rabbi Lizz Goldstein (’16)The summer is nearly here, more and more adults are vaccinated, and it seems new opportunities for gathering will become available. And yet, the language of “reopening” or “returning to normal” feels complicated for me. Setting aside for the moment all the issues that already existed in the old normal which were exacerbated and highlighted during the pandemic but largely ignored on the level of institutional change, the concept of “returning” now rings false when faced with the reality of how many people have been out and about right along. Some due to financial necessity, some due to youthful feelings of immortality, and some due to misinformation and the politicization of the virus. Now there are reports of variant strains of the coronavirus, that herd immunity may never really be...
