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30 05, 2013

Parashat Shelah

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

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 >

23 05, 2013

Parashat BeHa’alotkha

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

“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 >

17 05, 2013

Parashat Naso

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

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 >

9 05, 2013

Parashat Bemidbar

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

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 >

19 07, 2012

Parashat Mattot-Massei

By ahsilver|2012-07-19T17:13:30-04:00July 19, 2012|

Divided We Stand, United We Fall: Not Much Has Changed

I recall the period following the ’67 war when many Jews, religious and not, swelled with pride, kvelled, at what “our” tiny nation in the desert, surrounded by enemies, had accomplished. Some of us, so inspired by the military miracle, made aliyah, moved there permanently.

Notwithstanding the enthusiasm, the vast majority of Jews remained in their “native” lands. Little could induce most of us in the USA to emigrate because we had successfully assimilated and felt secure here.

Today about half the Jews in the world live in Eretz Israel and the other half outside it. These statistics cause some Israelis to delegitimize the loyalty of those of us outside. But the truth is that it’s always been this way.

The first of this week’s double parashah, Mattot, “Tribes,” is the earliest depiction of this conflict, as two of the tribes, the Gadites and Reubenites, ask Read More >

12 07, 2012

Parashat Pinhas

By Rabbi Isaac Mann|2012-07-12T10:32:16-04:00July 12, 2012|

Â By Rabbi Isaac Mann

The beginning of Parashat Pinhas seems out of place. We have here some details of a story that is basically recounted at the end of the previous parashah of Balak, and instead of finishing the story there, some of the details are left out and only filled in at the beginning of the next parashah. Why the need to spread the rather brief story over two parashiyot?

To elaborate, at the end of Balak, we are told of the Israelites engaging openly in an orgy of idolatry and immorality with Moabite/Midianite women with whom they had recently come into contact as they were approaching the Land of Canaan. Among the offenders was the head of a prominent family (nasi bet-av) of Shimon. The brazenness of their sinful activity sparked God’s anger against His people and resulted in the outbreak of a devastating plague. 24,000 people were killed until Pinhas, the Read More >

5 07, 2012

Parashat Balak

By ahsilver|2012-07-05T10:04:39-04:00July 5, 2012|

Out of Left Field: The Portion of Balak
By Rabbi Bob Freedman

Just at a point in the narrative of Numbers when the Israelites have begun to fight for the land that God has promised them comes the story of Bil’am. It seems to say, “Dear reader, maybe at this point in our story you fear that Israel is not doing well. Yes, they can fight, but at spiritual constancy or keeping purity of purpose, their record is truly dismal. Yet don’t despair; take a step back to see the bigger picture. Even now on the far heights of Mt. Pisgah God is readying the seer Bil’am, against his will, to bring blessing on Israel.”

This Bil’am story is odd. It is by far the longest of the very few narratives in the Torah that are not about events directly experienced by the generation of the Exodus or about their history. The Israelites camped in Read More >

28 06, 2012

Parashat Hukkat

By Rabbi Len Levin|2012-06-28T14:09:24-04:00June 28, 2012|

The Heifer’s Mysteries: Death and Purification

Â The law of the red heifer (Numbers, Chapter 19) is offered in the Jewish tradition as the paradigm of a hok, an arbitrary law whose reasons are known only to God, but surpass human understanding. A red heifer is slaughtered and burned to ashes, then its ashes are combined with pure water to be used in the purification ceremony of people unclean by reason of contact with the dead. The final purification ceremony would take place only after a seven day waiting period following contact with the dead. What could possibly be the rationale of such a ritual?

The 1^st-century Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, after delivering to a gentile an explanation by analogy with exorcism of a demon, was challenged by his students: “You deflected him with a reed! What would you say to us?” He replied: “The dead body does not defile, nor do the waters Read More >

21 06, 2012

Parashat Korah

By Doug Alpert|2012-06-21T14:03:38-04:00June 21, 2012|

My synagogue is presently undergoing seismic change. We will be leaving the building we have owned and occupied for about the last four years. We will be seeking to move to a more urban location, a move that bucks the persistent trend of local congregations in my hometown to move further out into the suburbs; a trend that either is driven by the desire for shuls to go where the Jews are, or, a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy of Jews going where the shuls are built… or not. Add to the mix my own entry into the kehilah (community) about one year ago with my pluralistic (read, AJR) sensibilities.

This change has precipitated some modicum of turmoil, and fairly strong push-back. Some have resorted to personal attack. In moving the shul forward I continue to ponder what it is those who are fighting these changes are fighting against. Likewise with this week’s parashah I Read More >

7 06, 2012

Parashat Beha’alot’kha

By ahsilver|2012-06-07T22:39:39-04:00June 7, 2012|

Someone gives you a gift and says, “Here, I was saving this for just the right moment.” That is what I love about discovering new insights in the Torah; it was there all along just waiting for the right moment to be revealed. The first paper I wrote in rabbinical school was based on a few verses from this week’s parashah, Beha’alotkha; Numbers 11:24-29 to be exact (see these verses below). Consumed with both the concept, reality and authenticity of prophecy as I was at that time, here was a treasure trove of material. We do not sometimes see the words that can change our lives, we are not given the meaning until it means something to US. Well, that’s the whole point, that’s why we keep at it. Now, after years of rabbinic training and more years of life experience, I see something I missed back then; what I could not Read More >

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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