Parashat Lekh Lekha 5780

Is Not the Whole Land Before You?
A D’var Torah for Parashat Lekh Lekha
By Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD

Every year on Simhat Torah, in my home community of Romemu, we unroll the entire Torah and the whole community holds it in a circle. Everyone present receives a biblical verse for the year. Most people draw a verse from a basket with many biblical verses on slips of paper. Some of us like to do it the “old-fashioned way”: by closing our eyes and pointing to the scroll. That’s what I did this year, and my finger landed on this passage:

“Avram said to Lot, “Let there not be a quarrel between me and you, between my shepherds and yours, for we are relatives (anashim ahim). Is not the whole land (kol ha’aretz) before you? Please separate from me. If you go left, I will go right, and if you go right, I will go left.” (Gen 13:8-9)

It seemed an ominous passage Read More >

By Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD|2022-07-29T11:24:31-04:00November 8, 2019|

Parashat Noah 5780

Deluge, Ancient and Modern
A D’var Torah for Parashat Noah
By Rabbi Len Levin

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and all their host. God saw everything that God made, that it was good. All the beings and creatures followed the innate laws of their being, as implanted in them by their creator. Everything was perfectly orderly and predictable.

Then God created human beings and granted them free will. All hell broke loose, and all bets were off.

Corruption spread from humans to all God’s creation. The world was reverting to chaos faster than God could catch the divine breath that was hovering over the waters. God resolved to wipe out the entirety of earthly creation, except for a few specimens from each species that God’s chosen human representative Noah would salvage in order to start over.

After the deluge, God considered what changes to institute to give things a better chance the next Read More >

By Rabbi Len Levin|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00November 1, 2019|

Parashat Bereishit 5780

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

For many years now, I have been intrigued by one particular reading in my synagogue’s High Holiday mahzor (Mahzor Hadash, The Prayer Book Press). Entitled “Continuing Creation,” it says that “our Sages taught, the human being is ‘God’s partner in the work of Creation.’ God and we create together.” It goes on to say: “There is still much to be done: disease to be conquered, injustice and poverty to overcome, hatred and war to be eliminated. There is truth to be discovered, beauty to be fashioned, freedom to be achieved, peace and righteousness to be established.”

This reading’s appeal rests on its nobility: lofty, even holy goals that become the mission toward which we work. In positing us as God’s partners in the work of Creation, this passage invests our lives with a transcendent purpose and significance.

But what exactly does it mean to say that we are God’s Read More >

By Bruce Alpert|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00October 25, 2019|

Parashat Ha’azinu 5780

A D’var Torah for Parashat Ha’azinu
By Rabbi Isaac Mann

Moses’ final message to the assembled Israelite people came in the form of a poetic song (shirah) that described in brief the spiritual history of their relationship with the Almighty. As with all poetry, what appears to be a simple, readily understood expression can upon careful examination actually contain layers of deeper meaning. One such verse is the following (Deut. 32:6):

“Do you thus requite the Lord, O vile people and unwise (am naval ve’lo hakham)? Is He not your father who has created you, who fashioned you and made you endure?”

The word naval, which is found only twice in the Pentateuch (in this verse and again a few verses later, in v. 21), denotes a person or a nation that repays its benefactor with evil. It is used most famously to refer to the husband of Avigail in the Book of Samuel Read More >

By Rabbi Isaac Mann|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00October 11, 2019|

Parashat Vayeilekh 5780

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 >

By Rabbi David Evan Markus|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00October 3, 2019|

Parashat Nitzavim 5779

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 >

By Rabbi Heidi Hoover|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00September 26, 2019|

Parashat Ki Tavo 5779

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 >

By Rabbi Irwin Huberman|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00September 20, 2019|

Parashat Ki Tetzei 5779

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 >

By Bruce Alpert|2022-07-29T11:24:32-04:00September 13, 2019|

Parashat Shoftim 5779

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 >

By Cantor Sandy Horowitz|2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00September 6, 2019|

Parashat Re’eh 5779

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 >

By Rabbi Len Levin|2022-07-29T11:24:33-04:00August 29, 2019|

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

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

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