Parashat Lekh L’kha

By Helene Santo

This week’s parashah, Lekh L’kha, opens with God saying to Avram:”Lekh l’kha (Go), me’artz’kha (from your land), mimolad’t’kha (from where you were born or according to other translations: from your family), umibeit avikha (and from your father’s house), el ha-aretz asher ar’eka (to a land that I will show you).” (Gen. 12:1)

Three years ago on this parashah, my daughter celebrated her bat mitzvah. She wondered whether how and even if God wrote the Torah. When she read that opening line, she asked what Avram heard. Did he hear a big booming voice? Did he hear a voice inside his head? Or did he hear something so supernatural it could be nothing but God? Most importantly, does it matter?

Many people believe that God literally dictated the Torah-the Five Books of Moses-to Moses on Mt. Sinai. But there are many parts of the Torah itself that suggest that Moses did not Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-10-16T12:46:24-04:00October 16, 2007|

Parashat Noah

By Michael Kohn

Two years ago, as the flood waters from Hurricane Katrina raged in New Orleans, some thought it necessary to remark that the devastation wrought by the storm was divine retribution for the sins of the people living in that area. According to press reports, some prominent Rabbis described Hurricane Katrina as America’s punishment for supporting Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and/or condemned its mainly African-American victims for failing to study Torah. And another noted an article he had written in which he suggested that the sinfulness of New Orleans residents, rather than the Gaza withdrawal, might explain the destruction and death Katrina visited on their city in particular.

These comments, coming from those who believe in the literal truth of the Torah, raise a troubling theological question: “Does G-d keep a promise?” For if mankind’s sins can result in a divine act of retribution large enough to ravage a city, can those Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-10-10T10:28:24-04:00October 10, 2007|

Parashat Noah

By Michael Kohn

Two years ago, as the flood waters from Hurricane Katrina raged in New Orleans, some thought it necessary to remark that the devastation wrought by the storm was divine retribution for the sins of the people living in that area. According to press reports, some prominent Rabbis described Hurricane Katrina as America’s punishment for supporting Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and/or condemned its mainly African-American victims for failing to study Torah. And another noted an article he had written in which he suggested that the sinfulness of New Orleans residents, rather than the Gaza withdrawal, might explain the destruction and death Katrina visited on their city in particular.

These comments, coming from those who believe in the literal truth of the Torah, raise a troubling theological question: “Does G-d keep a promise?” For if mankind’s sins can result in a divine act of retribution large enough to ravage a city, can those Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-10-10T10:28:24-04:00October 10, 2007|

Rosh HaShanah

By Rabbi Leslie Schotz

“In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups-the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.”

You may recognize that opening from a show called “Law and Order” which follows crime from two separate vantage points. The first half generally concentrates on the investigation of a crime by the police; the second half follows the prosecution of the crime in court.

Rosh Hashanah is also called Yom Ha-Din, the Day of Judgment. The liturgy calls upon the analogy of a great trial. On this day, the world is judged. In Franz Kafka’s book The Trial, the helpless victim doesn’t even know what his crime is. Just before the hero is killed, he wonders where was the judge whom he had never seen? But our trial on Rosh Hashanah is not cruel or by an unknown Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-09-25T07:52:18-04:00September 25, 2007|

Yom Kippur

Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein

The new year we began just last week stretches before us like an empty canvas and we pause to reflect before it. What are we going to paint on it this year? What will we write upon it? How do we make a difference with our lives? What really matters? It is a fresh start, a new beginning and, like the school kids’ brand-new, blank notebooks, for me it comes with excitement and enthusiasm. How can I fill it, and fill it well?

This year I am concerned about the tenor of our conversations. In an age of 24/7 communication, we often don’t stop to think about the impact of our words in the political world, in our work world, in our congregations or in our families. We forget to take time to think before we speak. We have grown too accustomed Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-09-25T07:30:51-04:00September 25, 2007|

Shemini Atzeret-Yizkor

Nostalgia – is it enough?
By Rabbi Robert Waxman

In Webster’s contemporary formulation, nostalgia is “longing for something far away or long ago.”

As we gather for Yizkor a wave of nostalgia fills the room. We are looking back, remembering. For some, we are looking back at a safe distance. For others, memories of loss and disappointments are as close as this past year.

Nostalgia is a big part of religious thought, for we can’t rely upon fate or biological ancestry to cultivate Jewish loyalty. Yet, we can’t return to shtetl nostalgia to assure Jewish continuity either: Tevya’s cry of “tradition” is no answer for his children’s questions. In fact, Tevya failed with his children. “Fiddler on the Roof” is musical entertainment, not reality. The shift has turned from external to internal, from fate to choice. Our children ask “what for?” They must be persuaded morally, spiritually, intellectually of the meaning and merits of Jewish Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-09-25T06:52:21-04:00September 25, 2007|

Sukkot

By Rabbi Jill Hammer

The quintessential image of harvest-time is the bundle: the sheaf of wheat, the bushel of apples, the cluster of grapes. The arba’ah minim, the four species of the lulav (- palm branch, etrog – citron, willow and myrtle), is the Jewish harvest-bundle, bringing together four different kinds of plant into a beautiful, fragrant bouquet. We wave this bouquet in the six directions, tethering ourselves to the Divine Presence dwelling in every corner of the earth. Symbolically, we show how different elements come together to make holiness. Sukkot, in many sensory and spiritual ways, allows us to experience the unity and multiplicity of our world. It is the festival of the web of life.

This theme of the bundle, of bringing together multiple aspects into a whole, abounds throughout Sukkot. The Temple sacrifices of Sukkot, which we read about in Read More >

By Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD|2007-09-25T06:50:15-04:00September 25, 2007|

Rosh HaShanah

By Dr. Ora Horn Prouser

As we finish preparing for Rosh Hashanah, I would like to offer a few words of Torah. The traditional Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah includes the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael from Abraham and Sarah’s home. As they wander out in the desert, Hagar, unable to watch the agony and anticipated death of her son, places him under a bush and sits down at a distance in tears. When the angel approaches Hagar explaining that she needn’t fear and that they would not die, she is directed to pick up her son, and ‘hold him by the hand.’ She then is able to see a nearby well; they drink, and survive the horrific experience. It is significant that God did not need to tell Hagar to drink or to provide water for her son; she knew to do that. Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-08-02T13:30:26-04:00August 2, 2007|

Parashat Mattot-Massei

By Rabbi Jeff Hoffman

I’m a guitarist. Have been for many years. On the guitar case of one of my guitars, I have affixed a bumper sticker that reads ‘What would Jerry say?’ The ‘Jerry’ referred to is Jerry Garcia, the late lead guitarist for the greatest rock ‘n roll band the world has known, The Grateful Dead. The bumper sticker is, of course, a knock-off of a contemporary Christian saying which substitutes another name that begins with a ‘J’ for the ‘Jerry’ in this sticker. I’m thinking about the sticker on my guitar case because it applies, in a way, to the Haftarah for this Shabbat. The point of the Haftarah can be seen as ‘What would Jeremiah say?’

The haftarah for this Shabbat is the second of the T’lata DePur`anuta, ‘the three (haftarot of) (Warning of) Punishment.’ These three haftarot are always read on the three Shabbatot that precede Tisha B’Av, and Read More >

By ahsilver|2007-07-10T12:12:23-04:00July 10, 2007|

Parashat Pinhas

By Bruce Alpert

Our parashah this week begins in a curious place. The affair of Baal-Peor is related in Chapter 25 of Bemidbar – a brief 18 verses. Yet the story is broken in half by the division of the parashiot ‘ nine verses last week in Balak and the final nine in this week’s parashah, Pinhas. Certainly it would seem more logical to read this story in its entirety, within a single parashah.

Pinhas, of course, is a problematic character ‘ one who has troubled us at least since Talmudic times. His rash act in killing Zimri and Cozbi seems to define religious zealotry at its very worst. Yet that act ends a plague that took the lives of 24,000 Israelites and, we learn this week, earns him and his family God’s eternal favor. How are we to reconcile our own natural abhorrence at Pinhas’s actions with all the good and favor Read More >

By Bruce Alpert|2007-07-03T08:18:15-04:00July 3, 2007|

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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