RJ Blog

They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. -Genesis 7:14-15 Planning a vacation to Crete, we were interested to read in some of the hotel reviews references to the multitude of cats that are ubiquitous and annoying, including in hotel dining rooms. We are looking forward to comparing notes, as every visitor [...]

God placed in [the heavens] a tent for the sun, who is like a groom coming forth from his chamber, like a hero, eager to run his course. His rising-place is at one end of the heaven, and his circuit reaches the other; nothing escapes his heat. -Psalms 19:5-7 Driving around the country these days, once encounters here and there workers installing charging stands or battery replacement stations for “Better Place,” the electric car project whose primary demonstration site is Israel. Better Place has its headquarters, symbolically, in a converted tank in the decommissioned fuel tank farm at the northern entrance [...]

When the Holy One Blessed be He created the first humans, he showed them all the trees in the Garden of Eden, and said to them: See how wonderful and pleasant are my creations! Everything I created – I created for you. Take care not to spoil or destroy my world, for if you do, there is no one to fix it for you. -Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13

Praised are You, O Lord our God, who has freed me from the punishment (i.e. responsibility for the deeds) of this one. -Traditional parent’s blessing at a bar/bat mitzvah Here at Shorashim, a hilltop rural community of about 100 families (~450 people), a typical Shabbat morning service draws about 20-25 worshippers, all of them residents, with an occasional guest family staying the weekend. When a Shorashim kid celebrates a bar/bat mitzvah, the synagogue is packed (80 seats plus standees in the margins). Of course there are family and friends from outside, but the crowd is mostly us. The celebration is a big deal [...]

Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid… -Micah 4:4

And you shall also take a chieftain from each tribe through whom the land shall be apportioned for you… From the tribe of Asher: a chieftain, Ahihud son of Shelomi. -Numbers 34:18, 27

Israelis for years rejected Reform as an import. They imported jeans and Coca Cola with enthusiasm – but pluralism and egalitarianism were stopped at the border… -Rabbi Naamah Kelman-Ezrahi, dean of HUC Jerusalem, at the Israel Biennial The Reform movement in Israel recently held its biennial convention, at the beautiful Shefayim convention center on the bluffs overlooking the Mediterranean, just south of Netanyah. The weather was perfect, and the atmosphere festive. A thousand laymen and communal professionals gathered from the movement’s congregations throughout the country, including lots of teenagers from the youth movement and the pre-army preparatory program in Yaffo. Students [...]

You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt. -Exodus 23:9 We fight world Jewry as one has to fight a poisonous parasite… -German army manual, 1939 We will not allow illegal immigration to spread like a cancer in our society. -Miri Regev, Knesset Member, at south Tel Aviv rally

A man is nothing but a small plot of land, A man is nothing but the image of the landscape of his birthplace, Only what his ear recorded when it was still fresh, Only what his eye took in before it had seen too much, Whatever was encountered on the dew-covered path By the child who tripped over every bump and clod of earth… -Shaul Tschernichovsky (early 20th century)

On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone forth from the land of Egypt, on that very day, they entered the wilderness of Sinai. -Exodus 19:1 The holiday of Shavuot, as it is described in the Torah (Numbers 28:26) is a harvest festival, when “first fruits” are brought as an offering in the Temple. It has no historical referent, its timing was set according to the counting off of seven weeks from the second day of Pesach. However, the rabbis of the Talmud somehow (creatively, it seems) calculated that the date coincided with the giving of the Torah at Mt. [...]

Once, a man threw a party and invited his friend Kamtza. The messenger made a mistake and delivered the invitation to the man’s enemy Bar-Kamtza. When Bar-Kamtza showed up the host tried to convince him to leave and Bar Kamtza tried to convince the host to let him stay; in the end he was forcibly evicted. He said: “Since the leaders of the community were present and didn’t intervene, I’ll get my revenge on the whole community by inciting the emperor against them.” And so he did; thus was the destruction of the Temple and the loss of our sovereignty [...]

The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest. He is to wave the sheaf before the LORD so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath… You must not eat any bread, or roasted or new grain, until the very day you bring this offering to your God. This is to be a lasting ordinance for [...]

…Thus said the Lord: I accounted to your favor the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride – how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of His harvest… -Jeremiah 2:2-3 Recently I was invited by Kibbutz Yahel, the more veteran of the two Reform kibbutzim in the Aravah desert (the other is Kibbutz Lotan), to spend a Shabbat there and lead a couple of study sessions. Tami and I try to make at least one excursion to the desert each year, so this was a [...]

…At [Akko] also the inhabitants of Zippori of Galilee who (being sensible of the power of the Romans) were for peace with the Romans, received Vespasian, the Roman general, very kindly, and readily promised that they would assist him against their own countrymen. -Josephus, Wars of the Jews 3:2:4 Recently we had the first warm, sunny, dry Friday in months, to which I had been looking forward so I could attack the waist-high weeds that have overwhelmed the garden during the winter. But I had gotten an invitation to the dedication of a newly opened section of the ancient water works [...]