Sukkot

Sukkot
By Margaret Frisch Klein

The words of Qohelet that we read during Sukkot are haunting, ‘To everything there is a season and a purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die . . . A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.’ It became the popular hit ‘Turn, Turn, Turn,’ in the sixties when the Birds set it to music, which you can still hear on the radio, mostly on oldies stations.

There is a beautiful niggun, part of our daily evening service, ‘Ufros Alenu Sukkat Shlomecha’”Spread over us the shelter, the sukkah of Your Divine peace,’ that is also haunting and appropriate for Sukkot. That prayer recognizes the fragility of peace and of shelter. This Sukkot more than ever, in the wake of Katrina, Rita and the even more recent devastating earthquakes, we need to make this connection from the spiritual realm Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-27T00:33:42-04:00June 27, 2006|

Emor

The Sacred Calendar and the Cycle of Time

By Michael Kohn

To everything’turn, turn, turn
There is a season’turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven¹

In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes that ‘Judaism is a religion of time, aiming at the sanctification of time. . . . Jewish ritual may be characterized as the art of significant forms in time, as architecture of time. Most of its observances’the Sabbath, the New Moon, the festivals, the Sabbatical and the Jubilee year’depend on a certain hour of the day or season of the year.’ And these observances recur year after year after year.

At least half of Parashat Emor speaks of these observances’the mo’adim, those appointed times fixed by God, as mikra’ei kodesh, holy convocations. The first described is Shabbat. Thereafter, the Torah describes in order: Pesah, Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-26T23:37:31-04:00June 26, 2006|

Terumah

The Giving of Gifts

By Katy Allen

The Glory of the Lord dwelt upon Mount Sinai, hidden within a cloud’and God called to Moses from the midst of the cloud. Then the Glory of the Lord appeared’as a consuming fire on top of the mountain. Moses went inside the cloud and ascended the mountain; and Moses remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. (Ex. 24.16’18)

While Moses is in this cloud, God speaks to him. The first thing God tells Moses is that he should tell the people ‘ those whose hearts so move them’to bring gifts. God then lists the gifts they should bring: among them are gold and silver, copper, yarn, linen, ram skins, and acacia wood.

How will all these gifts be used? God describes it all in intricate detail. They are Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-26T15:23:37-04:00June 26, 2006|

Shlah Lekha

by Halina Rubinstein

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses decides to send
scouts on a reconnaisance mission to Canaan. Twelve
men, one from each tribe, are chosen and given
specific instructions on what they have to observe.
They come back with a sample of the land’s
indigenous fruits and a mixed review. They all
report that the land flows with ‘milk and honey’ but
their agreement ends here; of the twelve scouts, ten
give a frightening report of a land that eats up its
inhabitants and is populated by powerful giants.
Upon hearing this, the people start crying in sheer
terror, and they not only complain but rebel and
contemplate going back to Egypt. Only Joshua and
Caleb encourage the people to continue with the plan
of entering the land. They reassure the Israelites
that they will prevail; but these words only provoke
the mutinous people even more and the people are
ready to stone Joshua and Caleb to death.

The result of this act of disbelief incenses God. He
will Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-21T08:30:27-04:00June 21, 2006|

Yitro

Parshat Yitro-Mishpatim

By Steven Saks

Often the original movie or book is better that the sequel. Last year I caught the end of Beverly Hills Cop, staring Eddie Murphy on TV. I had not seen it in years, and I had forgotten how funny a movie it was. It was genuinely a good comedy. However, not to many people will say the same of Beverly Hills Cop Two. And Beverly Hills Cop Three bombed.

Does the Torah follow the same pattern as the movies? Parshat Yitro, which precedes Parshat Mishpatim, is certainly an exciting Parsha. Yitro, the Midianite priest and father-in-law of Moses joined the Hebrews after he heard that God had saved the Hebrews. Yitro brings his daughter Zipporah and grandchildren, thus reuniting Moses with his wife and children.

The excitement continues with the revelation at Sinai. After three days Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-20T09:45:43-04:00June 20, 2006|

Parashat Bâ€™haâ€™alotâ€™cha

By Cantor Jaclyn Chernett

The troubled Moses cries to God in his loneliness.
How can he continue to cope with the constant
complaining and irresponsible behaviour of his people!
He is worn down by his burden, but at no time does
he seek to relinquish leadership. For Moses, the
leader, the prophet, the only alternative would be
death.

The calling of the prophet is indeed a lonely one.
Prophecy has been described in many ways during
the long years of our literary tradition. The prophecy
of Moses is a paradigm of the most intense
relationship with God ‘ nobody else ever experienced
it this way: With him I speak mouth to mouth,
plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds the likeness
of the Lord. (Num. 12:8)

Miriam and Aaron, in the same text-breath, are, too,
accredited with the prophetic relationship with God
but not in the same Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-14T09:38:19-04:00June 14, 2006|

Parashat Naso

By Cantor Arnold Saltzman

In Parashat Naso the Priestly Benediction,
also known as Birkat Kohanim is set apart in a
very important manner, punctuated with spaces not
unlike the text for Shirat Hayam ‘ the Song at
the Red Sea – and the Ten Commandments.

The kohanim, the priests, have the power to
bless the people, and this power comes from God and
is channeled through the kohanim, going back
through Aaron and Moses, the Patriarchs, Noah, and
Adam and Chava to whom God gave the
blessing ‘Multiply on Earth.’ (Gen. 1:28) The power to
bless originates in God.

The Priestly Blessing is a three-fold blessing. Some
explain that there are three phrases in order to
remember the patriarchs Avraham, Yitzchak and
Ya’akov, and that God blesses us because of their
merit.

The first blessing begins with ‘Y’varekhekha –
may God bless you’ ‘ understood by one tradition to
refer to one’s possessions. If a Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-08T12:45:29-04:00June 8, 2006|

Shavuot

By Jonathan Zimet

On Shavuot we recall, and re-enact, the revelation
event of our history. There, in the desert, we see a
large group of ex-slaves, traveling by foot. Then,
on just three days notice, they experience something
so awesome that it had to transcend our usual
physical senses. Dark clouds, blinding flashes of
light; deafening voices and silent voices.

The account relates: “V’khol ha-`am ro-im et ha-
kolot v?et ha-lapidim“, the entire people saw the
thunder (and fires) (Ex. 20:14). Such an experience
is so overwhelming and transcendent that we cannot
make complete sense of it or translate it with our
usual senses. Similar descriptions have been
reported in prophetic visions and in near-death
experiences, where activity in our physical organs is
largely suspended.

Clearly, our people directly encountered God in what
became the transcendent and defining experience in
our history. God engraved a covenant Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-06-01T07:24:50-04:00June 1, 2006|

Parashat Bemidbar

Counting the Models of Religious Leadership in The Book of Numbers
By Rabbi Rena Kieval

I would like to dedicate this dvar Torah about
religious leadership to my fellow graduates, my
teachers, and all the students at AJR, where
individuals are embarked on this path in so many
different ways and bringing a multiplicity of talents
and roles to the holy work.

What makes a religious leader? In Sefer Va-yikra
(Leviticus) we learned in exhaustive detail about
the roles of the kohanim – priests, whom the
Torah refers to as meshuchim – anointed ones
(Num. 3:3). They are God’s elite religious
functionaries who live apart from the people, who
must meet strict standards of taharah ‘ purity – and who strive for, or symbolize, perfection.

In Sefer Bamidbar (Numbers), which
we begin reading this week, God announces the
selection of another group of religious leaders, the
levi’im – levites. The Torah calls Read More >

By Rabbi Rena Kieval|2006-05-26T14:34:24-04:00May 26, 2006|

Emor

By Rabbi Isaac Mann

The opening verse of the parashah – “Say (emor) to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and you shall say (v’amarta) to them ‘do not defile yourself to someone who died amongst his people,'” (Lev. 21:1)is a major source in the Midrash and Talmud for an important rabbinic teaching. From the redundancy of “emor” “v’amarta” the Rabbis derive that the adult priests must teach their young to follow in their ways, and just as the former are forbidden to be defiled by contact with a corpse so too the young must be instructed to follow this law. Thus the phrase of “and you shall say to them – v’amarta aleihem – applies to the offspring, so as to say, “You shall teach them what I am teaching you.”

By extension, the Rabbis teach us that every adult Jew must teach his children to follow the laws of the Torah. We Read More >

By Rabbi Isaac Mann|2006-05-18T16:19:57-04:00May 18, 2006|

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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