Va’era

By Heidi Hoover

In this week’s parashah we begin with God’s reassurance to
Moses that God is El Shaddai, the same One who appeared to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and that God will indeed free the Israelites. This
appears to be in order to restore Moses’ confidence in God. That
confidence (which was always shaky anyway) doesn’t seem entirely
restored, because when God then reiterates the command to Moses that he
should go and speak to Pharaoh, Moses again protests that his oratory
abilities are not up to the job. As a result, Aaron is sent along with
him.

Then there is an interruption in the narrative flow, where the
families of three of the Israelite tribes’Reuven, Simeon, and Levi’are
listed. After this partial genealogy, the narrative continues to what
is probably one of the most familiar parts of the Torah’the plagues
brought down on Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The first seven
plagues’blood, frogs, lice, insects (or wild beasts), cattle disease,
boils, and hail’are described in Va’era. Read More >

By Rabbi Heidi Hoover|2006-03-23T08:13:01-05:00March 23, 2006|

Shemot

The Fast and the Slow
By Greg Schindler

This D’var Torah is dedicated in honor of the Bar Mitzvah of my son, Gabriel Jonah.

The story is told in the Talmud of a man who came to the sage Hillel
and requested, ‘Teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.’
(Shabbos 31a) The man had previously made this request of the sage
Shammai, who chased him away. But Hillel did not chase the man away.
Rather, he said to him, ‘That which you hate, do not do to others. The
rest is commentary.’ While you may be familiar with the story up to
here, there is one more line to the tale. Hillel then adds: ‘Now go and
study!’

In this simple account lies a great truth of learning. Learning comes in two ways: The ‘Fast’ and the ‘Slow.’

The ‘Fast’ is the flash of insight where’out of the blue’an idea
takes form in our mind. This is Hillel’s reduction Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T08:09:36-05:00March 23, 2006|

Vayehi

By Michael Kohn

Vayehi is the final parashah of Sefer Bereshit and brings to a close not only the lives of Jacob and Joseph but the narrative of the Patriarchs as well. It is a major transition point in
the Torah narrative, inasmuch as the second chapter of Sefer Shemot begins with the birth of Moses. And as Prime Minister Sharon lies seriously ill in Hadassah Hospital, regardless of the outcome of his current condition, it is obvious that a major transition point, like
that described in this parashah, is occurring today in Israel.

In Vayehi, the Torah employs interesting juxtapositions of the third Patriarch’s two names’Jacob and Israel’perhaps as a way of illustrating the transition. For example, at the very outset, the Torah tells us: ‘Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; and the span of Jacob’s life was one hundred and forty-seven years. When the time for Israel to die drew Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T08:06:13-05:00March 23, 2006|

Vayehi

By Michael Kohn

Vayehi is the final parashah of Sefer Bereshit and brings to a close not only the lives of Jacob and Joseph but the narrative of the Patriarchs as well. It is a major transition point in
the Torah narrative, inasmuch as the second chapter of Sefer Shemot begins with the birth of Moses. And as Prime Minister Sharon lies seriously ill in Hadassah Hospital, regardless of the outcome of his current condition, it is obvious that a major transition point, like
that described in this parashah, is occurring today in Israel.

In Vayehi, the Torah employs interesting juxtapositions of the third Patriarch’s two names’Jacob and Israel’perhaps as a way of illustrating the transition. For example, at the very outset, the Torah tells us: ‘Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; and the span of Jacob’s life was one hundred and forty-seven years. When the time for Israel to die drew Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T08:06:13-05:00March 23, 2006|

Vayigash

Toward Reconciliation
By Harvey Israelton

At the end of last week’s parashah, Miketz, Joseph’s brothers
had returned to Egypt to appear once again before Joseph, and they had
brought with them Joseph’s only full brother, Benjamin (Joseph and
Benjamin were Rachel’s only children). Joseph had stated that Benjamin
will remain with him as his slave and that the other brothers may
return home. This week’s parashah, Vayigash, begins with one of
the most dramatic scenes in all of Bereshit: Judah making a moving plea
for mercy for Benjamin, or more precisely, for their father Jacob, so
as to spare Jacob the loss of both his favorite children.

After his plea for mercy, Judah offers to remain as a slave in place
of Benjamin. This is a very different Judah than the man we saw at the
moment when the brothers threw Joseph into the pit so many years ago.
Although Judah was among those who argued against killing Joseph, it
was he who suggested that Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T08:03:50-05:00March 23, 2006|

Miketz

Shabbat Chanukah

By Michael Rothbaum

In memory of Naomi Goodman, z”l, past president of the Jewish Peace Fellowship

About 2,200 years ago, as many of us know, a ragtag group of
insurgents known as the Maccabees defeated what was then one of the
strongest military forces in the known world, the Syrian Greek Empire.

A few centuries later, in deciding how to tell this story, the
rabbis did a funny thing. They changed it. The story of the Maccabees?
It’s found nowhere in Jewish scripture. All that war business? They it
took out. In the Talmud, the rabbis include a brief narrative’not about
war, but about a jar of oil.

The rabbis, one might argue, had learned the lessons of history. By
the time of the Talmud, the Maccabees are long gone. The Romans have
conquered Jerusalem. Some Jews’particularly young Jewish men and
boys’won’t stand for it. They carry out guerilla attacks against the
Romans. Sometimes, these young people die. And sometimes, like the
Maccabees, they attack Read More >

By Rabbi Michael Rothbaum|2006-03-23T08:01:14-05:00March 23, 2006|

Vayeshev

Fraught with Background
By Alan Levenson

Erich Auerbach (1892’1957), a great German-Jewish scholar of
literature, once wrote that to fully appreciate any particular
character or narrative in TaNaKh (Jewish Bible) one must appreciate
that they are ‘fraught with background.’ In Genesis 37 we are given
several good reasons for the brothers’ hatred of Joseph. He is a
tattletale; he is the recipient of a visible symbol of Jacob’s
favoritism (the ketonet passim’the special coat); and he obliviously
relates those self-aggrandizing dreams’twice. Although the brothers are
already past the point of speaking civilly to him (Gen. 37:4b),
Joseph’s dreams seem to be the ‘tipping point.’ When Joseph finally
finds the brothers at Dothan, they refer to him as follows: ‘hiney ba’al ha-halamot ha lazeh ba’ (Gen 37:19). I hear much more of an edge in the Hebrew than in the pat OJPS translation, ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh.’

On first glance, then, the brothers’ hatred is adequately explained
by Genesis 37’which brings me back to Auerbach. Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T07:48:43-05:00March 23, 2006|

Vayishlah

Jacob’s Struggle with the Angel
By Rebecca Tenenbein

This d’var Torah is written in loving memory of my grandparents

Edith Tenenbein, Alexander Tenenbein, and Abe Newborn, z”l

Jacob must go back to his homeland, Canaan, but first he must settle
accounts with his brother, Esau. Twenty years have passed since Jacob
ran away with the fear that his brother might kill him. Twenty years
have changed them both greatly. The night before the meeting between
the two brothers, ‘Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him
until the break of dawn.’ (Genesis 32:35). When morning comes, Jacob
has a new name, Israel.

Who did Jacob actually wrestle with? Who was this man? Many rabbis
and great thinkers have spent time interpreting this passage. The
commentator Rashi suggests that it was Esau’s angel. Jacob was worried
about his upcoming meeting with Esau. Rashi adds that when Jacob
realized that he was wrestling with Esau’s angel, he saw that he could
possibly persuade Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T07:46:56-05:00March 23, 2006|

Vayetzei

The Quality of Gossamer
By Linda Shriner-Cahn

Jacob comes to an unnamed spot, running to an ill-defined future,
from a traumatic past. Everything is unsure. He has no moorings. He is
untethered, and then he puts a rock on the ground, rests his head,
dreams, and is transformed.

‘God was in this place and I, I did not know it.’ (Gen. 28:16’as translated by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner)

Jacob has a dream, a strange dream. It disconcerts him; it makes him
shudder. What does he dream? He dreams of a stairway that goes between
heaven and earth, with angels going up and down and God standing next
to him. It is almost too much, but there is more. God speaks and
promises him the future.

‘God was in this place and I, I did not know it.’

Jacob wakes from his dream and knows that he has experienced
something truly extraordinary, but he can’t hold on to it, can’t
sustain it. So he tries to make it last Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T07:44:48-05:00March 23, 2006|

Toldot

In the Blindspot-light
By Rabbi Steven J. Rubenstein

Each year I cringe when the postcard arrives in the mail reminding
me that my appointment with the optometrist is due. A couple of years
ago my eye doctor welcomed me to the club of those whose eyesight would
gradually diminish with age. I know from experience that reading the
fine print of the Talmud had become increasingly difficult with each
passing month, but I tried to ignore the fact that the letters of the
Torah were becoming a bit fuzzier around the crowns when I read from
the scroll on Shabbat.

How our ancestor Isaac would have benefited from a yearly eye check-up if it had been available to him! In this week’s portion Toldot, we are told, ‘Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see.’ To see what?

Right before this comment, the Torah tells us that both Isaac and
his wife Rebecca were disappointed when their son Esau Read More >

By ahsilver|2006-03-23T07:43:25-05:00March 23, 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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