Parashat Nitzavim 5778
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Parashat Ki Tavo 5778
A D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Tavo
by Rabbi Bruce Alpert (’11)
One of the sublime joys of studying at AJR is experiencing tefillah in its community – especially at Retreat. Being in a room with 70 or 80 people, each of whom is, in some way, expert at Jewish prayer, is wondrous. And with a leader who is seeking – through her choice of prayers, songs, and niggunim – to impress upon her congregants a particular insight or perspective on our liturgy, you have an experience that can meet the high expectations for kavanah, for the intentionality that our rabbis have set for us as our goal in communicating with the Holy One.
I came to AJR with a very limited and narrow perspective on prayer. AJR broadened that perspective to my horizons, and then beyond them. It did so by fulfilling the words of Psalm 100: “Serve the Lord in gladness; come into His presence with Read More >
Parashat Ki Teitzei 5778
Restoring What Has Been Lost
A D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Teitzei
by Rabbi Rena Kieval (’06)
When life gets busy, with many distractions, I have a tendency to misplace objects: my keys, my cell phone, or a piece of mail with important information. Most of us have had the experience of losing an item whose absence disrupts the tasks of daily life. When that happens, a possession can take on an importance out of proportion to its true value. Even when we lose an object that is not especially essential, something feels awry, out of kilter. Lost objects can have a strange power, an ability to make everything feel disrupted. Conversely, when a lost object is located or returned, the relief can be huge: order seems to be restored.
The mitzvah of hashavat aveidah, the obligation to return lost objects to their owner, is stressed in the Torah and later rabbinic tradition. Parashat Ki Teitzei includes this mitzvah among its treasure trove Read More >
Parashat Shoftim
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Parashat Re’eh 5778
A D’var Torah for Parashat Re’eh
By Rabbi Isaac Mann
For this week’s d’var Torah on parashat Re’eh, I would like to share with you some homiletic interpretations that pertain to the mitzvah of tzedakah (roughly translated as “charity”) and that express some deep insights into this mitzvah.
The Torah devotes several verses to encouraging and demanding that the Jewish people give charity (through tithes) or lend money to the poor. In this week’s Torah sidra, the obligation to give to the needy is first expressed in the form of two negative commandments – “You shall not harden your heart and you shall not close your hand from your needy brother” (Deut. 15:7). This is followed by a positive instruction – “Rather you shall surely open your hand to him, and you shall lend him sufficient for his needs which he is lacking” (15:8).
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in his commentary on the Pentateuch observes that Read More >
Eikev 5778
A D’Var Torah for Parashat Eikev
By Cantor Sandy Horowitz (’14)
“Dear when you smiled at me, I heard a melody
It haunted me from the start
Something inside of me started a symphony
Zing! Went the strings of my heart”
These lyrics come from a song made famous by Judy Garland in 1938 and recorded by others many times since. “Zing went the strings of my heart…” What does this mean, exactly? According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the term “heartstrings” refers to one’s “deepest emotions or affections”. According to our singer, “Zing!” is the sound of heartstrings tugged by love.
Imagine our awareness of Divine Love being so strong, so immediate that it would make our heart go “Zing!” Perhaps that is what God is asking of the Israelites in Parashat Eikev this week when they are commanded, “U’maltem et orlat l’vavkhem v’arp’khem lo takshu od”, “You shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart, therefore, and be Read More >
Va’ethanan 5778
The Paradox of Faces
A D’var Torah for Va’ethanan
By Rabbi Jill Hammer
This parashah is a second telling of the wilderness revelation: a remix of Sinai, if you will. Our parashah is a part of the long speech Moses makes to his people as they are about to enter the land of Canaan. It is also the center of a crucial Jewish paradox.
Moses describes the revelation at Sinai by saying: “The Eternal spoke to you out of the fire, you heard the voice of words (kol devarim) but you saw no image, nothing but a voice.”
This description of revelation is so complex as to resemble a Zen koan. First of all, in spite of the way I just translated it, it’s in the present tense: ‘You hear the voice of words, but you see no image, nothing but a voice.” It’s a description of God focused on sound, voice, story, and yet we see Read More >
Devarim 5778
Call for Spiritual Rebirth
A Dvar Torah for Devarim
By Len Levin
“How [eikhah] can I bear alone your trouble, your burden, your quarrel?” (Deut. 1:12)
A paradox. Deuteronomy is the sunniest, most radiant and optimistic book of the Torah. “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul” (10:12). “The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land…where you will lack nothing” (8:7-8). “The Lord your God will bless you in all you do” (15:18). “For you will do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God (12:28).
But it also contains dark passages. There is the historical recollection of the Golden Calf (9:8-21). There are the Read More >
Mattot/Massei 5778
A D’var Torah for Mattot/Massei
by Rabbi Heidi Hoover (AJR ’11)
In this week’s Torah portion, Mattot/Massei, we have a remarkable episode. Two tribes, Reuben and Gad, look around the land where they Israelites are staying before they enter the Promised Land. They see that the land where they are is good for cattle, and they are cattle-herders. They decide this is the land they want, instead of the allotment of land they’ve been promised in Canaan.
What is surprising about this portion is that we’ve taken it for granted ever since the Exodus that what the Israelites really want is to get to the Promised Land. That was the destination after the Exodus. During the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness they’ve just been waiting for the opportunity to get into the Promised Land. Or so we would think. Then along comes this passage where two tribes go to Moses and say, “We’re Read More >
Pinhas 5778
A D’var Torah for Pinhas
by Rabbi Bruce Alpert (AJR ’11)
Merely to have survived is not an index of excellence,
Nor, given the way things go,
Even of low cunning.
Yet I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a green bay tree.
And the good as if they had never been;
Their voices are blown away on the winter wind.
Those familiar with the old Reform mahzor, Gates of Repentance, will recognize these lines from the poem Words for the Day of Atonement by Anthony Hecht. They remind us that, even if lacking in other virtues, survival itself is the necessary component and, in times of distress, a lofty enough goal.
Mere survival is the underlying theme of this week’s parashah, Pinhas. The various threats to that survival that have arisen over time – the sin Read More >
