Vayehi

Parashat Vay’hi
Hazzan Marcia Lane

As a Jew, and in particular as a hazzan, I’ve always felt very comfortable with life in thegolah, in exile from the Land of Israel. As much as I love it when I’m there, I feel my Judaism strengthened by my life here in the United States. In the final parashah of the book of Genesis, Vay’hi, we close out the narrative of the families of our patriarchs and prepare for the next story, one that will take the tribes descended from those patriarchs from servitude in Egypt to the brink of the Land of Canaan, which will later become Israel. The essence of Parashat Vay’hi is life and death, specifically the lives and deaths of Jacob and his beloved son Joseph. Curiously, the ways in which they lived are not necessarily reflected in the events surrounding their deaths. Is there something to be learned from these two men about relationships to family, to the land Read More >

By Rabbi Isaac Mann|2014-02-13T11:49:42-05:00February 13, 2014|

Va-Yigash

Parashat Va-Yigash

Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky

In Parashat Va-Yigash we read the following description of the conversation between Joseph’s brothers and their father Jacob.

“But when they recounted all that Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to transport him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.” (Genesis 45:27)

According to this verse, Jacob had been in a state of mourning during the years when he thought that Joseph was dead, but upon hearing the news that he was still alive, “the spirit of their father Jacob revived.”

The Rambam, Moses Maimonides, in the seventh chapter of his introduction to his commentary on Pirkei Avot, addressed the issue of prophecy. What is prophecy? How does someone become a prophet? What affects prophecy? Below are some selections from that chapter, with the Rambam eventually integrating the renewed spirit of Jacob from this week’s parashah into the Read More >

By ahsilver|2014-02-13T11:46:57-05:00February 13, 2014|

Hanukkah

Hanukkah

by Rabbi Len Levin

Why do we celebrate Hanukkah? Why is it not commemorated in the Bible or in the Mishnah? And what lessons does it have for our time?

Hanukkah commemorates the clash of Judaism with the dominant Hellenistic civilization of late antiquity. Not only did the Syrian king Antiochus seek to impose pagan worship on the Jews; there were also Jews who actively sought to blend entirely into that civilization. Males disguised their circumcision in order to compete naked in the gymnasium. The Temple was converted into a pagan temple and a pig was offered on the altar. There was the real danger that the practice of Judaism would come to an end.

The Maccabees led a successful revolt, drove out the Syrians, and rededicated the Temple. “Hanukkah” means “dedication” and its name derives from that event.

But the struggle did not end there. The descendants of the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, founded a dynasty. Read More >

By Rabbi Len Levin|2014-02-13T11:34:35-05:00February 13, 2014|

Parashat Shelah

Holy Imperfection
By Rabbi Len Levin

In one of his most Promethean poems, “The Dead of the Wilderness,” the modern Hebrew poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik depicts the generation of the world as sleeping giants, who one day will rise tempestuously to declare, “We are the last generation of slavery, and the first generation of freedom!”

Bialik bases his account explicitly on a passage in the Talmud (Bava Batra 73b), where an Arab desert-dweller reported to have seen the “dead of the wilderness,” so huge that a man on a camel with his spear upraised could pass under the bent knee of one of the fallen giants without touching him. He also implicitly relies on the view of Rabbi Eliezer, who in Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3 claims that the generation of the wilderness have a portion in the World to Come.

The biblical account does not paint such a positive picture of the generation of the wilderness. For Read More >

By Rabbi Len Levin|2013-05-30T14:25:57-04:00May 30, 2013|

Parashat BeHa’alotkha

“Dealing With The Enemies In Our Midst”

By Rabbi Dorit Edut

As we open the Ark to remove our Torah scrolls every Shabbat, we recite these lines which come from this week’s parashah, Numbers 10:35:

“When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say:

Advance, O Lord!

May Your enemies be scattered,

And may Your foes flee before You!”

Around this verse and the next one are inverted letter nuns, something which is only seen here in the Torah and seven times in the Book of Psalms. Our Sages of the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 115b-116a, discussed this and said that these lines are either an insertion meant to go elsewhere or actually form their own separate book of the Torah – which would mean there are really SEVEN books of the Torah, not five!

Yet I think these verses are really very integral to this portion and speak to us very personally today. First we must imagine the scene Read More >

By Rabbi Isaac Mann|2013-05-23T13:16:22-04:00May 23, 2013|

Parashat Naso

By Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman

The wilderness travels in the book of Bemidbar begin with the description of the Israelite’s camp, its orientation to the four directions: the Tabernacle at the center and the identifying banners of the twelve tribes flying at the front of each tribal camp. This is a traveling camp. It will dismantle itself and reassemble countless times over the next forty years. It will move in circles, never arriving at its hoped for destination, while days and years will pass. A lifetime will pass for these people as they journey forward and back, right and left, but they will always maintain a focus on the ‘holy’, the Tabernacle, at the center. The ‘holy’ will travel with them and as such, it must be dismantled and reassembled many times over, at each pause on the journey.

Our parashah tells us that each Levite clan, the Gershonite, Merrarite and Kohathite, has the appointed Read More >

By ahsilver|2013-05-17T10:22:21-04:00May 17, 2013|

Parashat Bemidbar

By Rabbi Isaac Mann

I often wondered when I was in a doctor’s examining room and he had to see my private parts that he told me to undress in private and only then would he come back in to examine me. Wasn’t he going to look at those erogenous zones anyway? If he was going to see me in my birthday suit in any case, why did I have to shed my clothes when he wasn’t looking? Was he some kind of fetishist or did he get sexual pleasure from watching someone disrobe – and thus, as an honorable man, told me to do so in private?

Actually, the doctor, perhaps unknowingly, was in sync with a very interesting Torah teaching that springs forth from a passage at the very end of the parashah of Bemidbar (Numbers 4:17-20), this week’s Torah reading.

In this passage God tells Moshe and Aaron Read More >

By Rabbi Isaac Mann|2013-05-09T10:19:38-04:00May 9, 2013|

Parashot Behar-Behukotai

Texts that Call for Faith
By Rabbi Judith Edelstein

This year, as in many, these two Torah portions are combined into one reading in order to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of the lunar calendar. Behar iterates the laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, to occur every seventh and fiftieth year respectively. At these times the fields and vineyards of the Israelites are to remain untouched, except for gathering produce from past years, which could be shared with others and eaten, but could not be sold for profit. All land is to be returned to its previous owner; this requires adjustments in payments as the Jubilee year approaches. One is prohibited from charging interest on a loan to an indigent Israelite. Hebrew slaves are to be treated with respect and can be redeemed by a relative. Finally, Hebrew slaves can go free, although gentile slaves are to remain captive, and possessions are to be passed Read More >

By ahsilver|2013-05-03T10:10:56-04:00May 3, 2013|

Parashat Aharei Mot-Kedoshim

Yearning for Wholeness
By Rabbi Len Levin

Chapter 19 of Leviticus is one of the most sublime-and one of the most puzzling-in the entire Bible. Imitate God through being “holy”; honor your parents; keep the Sabbath; do not put a stumbling-block before the blind; love your neighbor as yourself-what could be more ennobling and uplifting? But then there are the puzzling parts: don’t desecrate your sacrifice by keeping it till the third day; avoid mixtures in plowing, seeding, and clothing; don’t eat the fruit of immature trees. What does the one set of rules have to do with the other?

The seemingly indiscriminate mixture of ethical and ritual precepts is quite characteristic of the vision of the author of this section of Leviticus (dubbed “the Holiness Code” by modern Biblical scholars). The late Jacob Milgrom suggested, appropriately, that this author had heard the prophet Isaiah’s denunciation of those who observe priestly rituals and neglect ethics, Read More >

By Rabbi Len Levin|2013-04-18T11:15:29-04:00April 18, 2013|

Parashat Tazria-Metzora

By Rabbi Dorit Edut

Great joy resounded in the halls of modern science when the long-sought after “God particle”, the Higgs-boson element, was recently confirmed in the special, underground, womb-like fission testing chamber in Switzerland. While it is entirely wonderful to think that we can now have measurable evidence of how matter begins to be formed at the level of the smallest perceivable particles, yet there is nothing here emotionally or spiritually that can compare to the experience of giving birth to a child, a truly unforgettable spiritual event in our lives. Personally, I recall the birth of my children as a physically exhausting, but emotionally exhilarating time, where closeness of life AND death were tangibly experienced. During and immediately following my daughters’ births, I experienced a closeness to God like never before and which is hard to express in words. Because we are unable to remember our own birth or Read More >

By ahsilver|2013-04-11T10:36:37-04:00April 11, 2013|

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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