Reform Judaism: Torah Archives

Davar Acher: Is That the Best You Can Do?
August 29, 2010

by Yair Robinson
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

There is a story told by Winston Lord of a speech he wrote for Henry Kissinger. "[Kissinger] called me in the next day and said, 'Is this the best you can do?' . . . this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, 'Is this the best you can do?' So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he . . . asked me that same question . . . I said, 'Henry, I've beaten my brains out . . . I know it's the best I can do. . . ..' He then looked at me and said, '. . . now I'll read it.'" ¹

Doing one's best has come to be a cop out: something we might say, mealy-mouthed, to avoid improving ourselves. But as this story illustrates, it's actually a challenge--to commit one's faculties and abilities fully to the task at hand.

But what happens when our best isn't enough? At some point, we will say the wrong or hurtful word, we will duck our responsibility to others, we will be overwhelmed by the task before us. What then?

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

D'var Torah: Nitzavim/Vayeilech: The "Close to You" Mystery
August 29, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

All the Jewish endings come together every year. Here we are at the last Shabbat of 5770. We are almost at the end of the Torah, with just five chapters left to go. The old year is coming to an end. In just a few days, we will come into the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah seeking guidance and direction as we embark on a new year. If, as I proposed when I began writing these passages on Deuteronomy months ago, the Torah is our GPS for life, where is this week's portion taking us? How many options are we given for this last leg of our journey?

The answer in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 is that we do not have to travel by plane or spacecraft, nor do we need to book a cruise. The blueprint for a new year is closer than we think:

Surely, this Instruction [mitzvah] which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond your reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, "Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get if for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.

I love that phrase, "the thing is very close to you."But, I ask myself, "What does it mean for something to be close to us?"

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

Going Round in Circles
August 24, 2010 (16 Comments)

by Larry Kaufman

A current discussion on the Union's worship listserv started with a simple question about Reform practice vis-a-vis hakafa-- marching around the sanctuary with the Torah before reading from it. Practice of course varies from Reform congregation to Reform congregation (and perhaps in some congregations between Shabbat and the High Holy Days). But perhaps a clear-cut clue to the acceptance of the Torah processional in today's Reform is that it is seemingly taken for granted at what is probably the best-attended Reform service anywhere in the Movement, including High Holy Day services -- Shabbat morning at the Biennial. (Remember the on-line furor last year when the officiating rabbi suggested the assembly sit for the Shma?)

I started attending Biennials in the early eighties, but didn't become conscious of the hakafa until I became a Torah carrier as a regional president in the early nineties. This is not to say it wasn't happening earlier, only that its presence or absence would probably not have registered.

At my current congregation, hakafa was already a given when I became a member there three years ago. At my previous congregation, I was involved perhaps twenty-five years ago in making it minhag hamakom, the custom of the place. Hakafa had already become part of the routine at the monthly Family Service -- apparently at the urging of the assistant rabbis and the religious school principal. I got a call one day from the senior rabbi -- I was one of the people he routinely consulted when he was "taking the temperature" of the congregation -- who said "the guys" (his affectionate term for his younger colleagues) were pushing to extend the minhag to every Shabbat, and what did I think.

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Davar Acher: Preparing for Miracles
August 24, 2010

by David M. Frank
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Indeed, understanding is a central theme of Ki Tavo. Moses assembles the Israelites and, pointing out the great miracles they have experienced, he says: "Yet to this day the Eternal has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:3).

Why? Why, only many years later could the Israelites understand all they had previously witnessed and experienced?

In a poem called, "Miracles," Yehuda Amichai explains:

From far away, everything looks like a miracle,
But up close, even a miracle doesn't look like one.
Even a crosser of the divided Red Sea
Saw only the sweating back of the walker in front of him
And the movement of his large thighs . . .
(Modern Poetry in Translation, New Series, no. 4, winter 1993-94)

Often, we are just too caught up in the demands of the hour to perceive the miracle of which we are a part. Only later does understanding dawn and we realize that, in the words of our patriarch Jacob, "Truly, the Eternal is in this place, and I did not know it" (Genesis 28:16).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Ki Tavo: What Is Success?
August 23, 2010

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

"Success" is a song sung by the immigrant Jew, Tateh, in the Broadway play Ragtime. In the song, a father sings to his young daughter that "hope is in the air." They have journeyed to America, the new Promised Land, so that he can give his daughter a better life. Tateh defines "success" as "doing well." But, he is soon disillusioned in the fetid tenements and uses his prayer shawl (tallit) just to keep his sick daughter warm. Tateh calls upon God, "Why have you brought us here?" His despair does not prevent him from telling his little girl that they will find the success they came for. And sure enough, out of the curses of tenement life, the immigrant Tateh emerges with the blessings of love, good fortune, and harmony, achieving the success he yearned for, by play's end.

Poised to enter the Promised Land, Moses describes in detail what is to happen when the wilderness immigrants reach their destination, in our Torah portion this week. Elaborate rituals of thanksgiving, and an abundant litany and choreography of curses and blessings abound. But, it is in his final and fourth oration, at the very end of our portion, that we see what Moses's immigrants and Tateh have in common. Tateh asks, "Why have you brought us here?" and he yearns for success. In the exact same way, our ancestors are told the "why" of their four-decade journey. They are informed that their time wandering through the wilderness had a purpose: "that you might know that I the Eternal am your God" (Deuteronomy 29:5). God proved to them that they were cared for by giving them food each day (Exodus 16:14-21) and clothing and shoes that never wore out (Deuteronomy 29:4). But now, about to enter their new Land, they need to know how to achieve success for themselves, and how to be the beneficiaries of the blessings and the promise of the Land.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

Ki Teitzei
August 20, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL

Evil Amalek
Attacked the weakest of us
We must remember

How can we do this?
The fight for social justice
Is one place to start

Help the poor and weak
Those whom Amalek attacked
This is a mitzvah

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Ki Teitzei: On Parenting and Punishment
August 16, 2010

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Survey any class of bar and bat mitzvah students at High Holy Day time and you will find that the number one sin they can all agree upon is mouthing off to their parents at least once in the past year. Survey the parents of these students and you will find more than a few quite said that many of their sweet "tweens" are becoming rebellious and disrespectful, as the hormones seize their beings like an alien invasion. From time to time, I inform my students of the passage from Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and tell them that they should be thankful that this is not an operative Jewish practice today:

18] If a parent has a wayward and defiant [also translated as 'stubborn and rebellious'] son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, 19] his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of the community. 20] They shall say to the elders of his town, 'This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.' 21] Thereupon the residents of his town shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid.

Filed Under: Torah | Youth and Family Life

Davar Acher: Our Inner Battle
August 16, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Eric S. Gurvis
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Our portion this week opens with the words, "When you [an Israelite warrior] take the field against your enemies, and the Eternal your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive . . ." (Deuteronomy 21:10). It is notable that the opening phrase Ki teitzei lamilchamah, "When you [an Israelite warrior] take the field against your enemies" is written in the singular. Since our portion describes ancient Israel's teachings regarding going to war against an enemy, we may presume that the Torah does not envision such a battle being fought by a single person. Many commentators have paused to comment on this quandary.

One such teacher was Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov (Poland, approximately 1700−1760), who is credited as being the founder of modern Chasidism. Rabbi Israel addresses the Torah's singular voice by imagining it as referring not to a military conflict on the field of battle, but rather as an inner struggle that each individual faces in life. He teaches: "Every individual has no greater enemy than hisyetzer hara inclination to evil). Our Torah states that, 'If you go forth to war against it, God will deliver it into your hands'─that is, the Torah promises that you will emerge victorious. Not only that, but 'you will take it captive,' so that you will be able to harness the forces of the yetzer hara to serve God" ( Itturei Torah, vol. 6, compiled by Aharon Yaakov Greenberg [Tel Aviv: Yavneh Publishing House, 1995], p.129).

Filed Under: Torah

Shoftim
August 13, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL

We go to battle
And G-d is "walking with us"
But what does this mean?

By turning to G-d
We can find strength for the fight
Be victorious

"G-d is on our side"
Does not mean that we are right
It means we'll do right

Filed Under: Torah

The True Pursuit of Justice
August 12, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Rebecca Katz
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah)

Many principles found in this week's parsha, Shoftim, form a key part of the ethical Jewish tradition. Shoftim outlines several commandments regarding the establishment of a system of justice in the land of Israel. Perhaps one the most famous and oft-cited biblical phrases is part of Shoftim: "tzedek, tzedek tirdof," "justice, justice, shall you pursue."

Most striking about this parsha is the way in which it makes clear that the means by which we pursue justice are as important as the end itself. For example, we learn in this parsha that a person may only be convicted of a capital offense based on the testimony of two witnesses. It is clear that the achievement of a just world must be pursued through proper methods.

So how does the Torah's vision of a just society compare with the American justice system? The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Nearly 2.5 million people, or 3.2% of all adults, were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails in 2008. Of course, a prison sentence can serve multiple purposes; it can impose punishment and serve as a deterrent. Ultimately, though, the goal is to make society safer, by incarcerating individuals who pose a threat to the public. Yet statistics tell an interesting story: within three years of release, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated. Are we more eager to lock people up than to make our society safer in the long term? Are we, as Shoftim reminds us, pursuing justice through just means?

Filed Under: Social Action | Torah

Davar Acher: A Prisoner Cannot Free Himself from Jail
August 9, 2010

by Ezra Ende
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

In the Babylonian Talmud, B'rachot 5b, we read:

Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba fell ill. Rabbi Yochanan went up to him.
He said to him: Are these afflictions dear to you?
He answered: Not them nor their reward.
He replied: Give me your hand.
He gave him his hand and he raised him.
Rabbi Yochanan fell ill and Rabbi Hanina went up to him.
He said to him: Are these afflictions dear to you?
He answered: neither them nor their reward.
He replied: Give me your hand! He gave him his hand and he raised him.
Why was this? Let Rabbi Yochanan help himself stand! People say: A prisoner is not the One to free himself from prison.

We learn from this Talmudic story that each healer can become a patient as well. When that happens he (she) might not be able to heal himself (herself) but rather, rely on others to come and lift him (her). Many of us feel comfortable being there for others. But when it comes to us and our own neediness, we tend to shy away and don't always allow others to lift us.

We all know that "a shoemaker can walk barefoot." Even though we might be very skilled and successful in helping others, we could still suffer from those same challenges ourselves.

Child psychologists can struggle when dealing with their own children, marriage counselors might be divorced, and so on. That does not mean that they have failed. Unfortunately, no one is immune from life's challenges. We can all fall but in order to rise up we do need a helping hand.

Can we rely only on the hand of God?

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah : Shoftim: "Going Into Battle with God"
August 9, 2010

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

For over three decades, I have held the hands of people suffering with horrendous diseases, and offered prayers and support for those who struggle daily with chronic illness or depression. I have been in the trenches of battles with God waged by victims of abuse, neglect, or crime. I have seen courage in the face of adversity in the actions of parents with sick, disabled, or troubled children. I have been inspired by the faith of the survivors of war and disease who teach me about God every day as they use their Judaism to overcome the adversity that life has placed on their path. As a rabbi serving many military families who send loved ones into harm's way, I have prayed with members of our armed services and their families to ask God to watch over them as they travel to a war zone on behalf of a grateful nation. Day after day, I call upon God to go into battle for those I love and care for. I am not alone in this effort. So many of you call upon God to go into battle with you, and your loved ones, colleagues, neighbors, or friends, even if you don't use those exact words.

What are the weapons in our Jewish arsenal as we wage war against pain and suffering, fear and tragedy? For some it is prayer. Others count on the strength that comes from friends and relatives, medical professionals, caring communities, and clergy who offer love and support in an hour of need. This week's Torah portion, Parashat Shoftim, reminds us that the words of Torah can also be a source of strength and insight in adversity. One of my favorite lines of this week's portion is Deuteronomy 20:4: "For it is the Eternal your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory." Literally and figuratively, the idea of God haholeich imachem, "walking with you," is very appealing. No one wants to face adversity alone.

Filed Under: Jewish History | Torah

Parasha Re-eh: Wailing at the Wall
August 5, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Larry Kaufman

As a word person, I am particularly struck by the opening word of this week's reading, which gives the parasha its name: Re-eh, See. We are accustomed to being told Shma, Listen, Obey. In this case, though, we begin with the visual rather than the auditory, See, not Hear. While Moses doesn't directly develop the idea of seeing as compared to hearing, he talks about things that can be better comprehended with the eyes than with the ears: the pagan altars which are to be torn down, the pillars that are to be smashed, the faces that are not to be gashed. But the emphasis on seeing rather than hearing is more mine than actually inherent in the text.

The parasha opens with a brief reminder that the people have a choice between the blessing and the curse, each attributed to a different mountain which the people can see as Moses speaks. Moses assumes, out of a sense of cockeyed optimism, that they will be smart enough to choose the blessing, and then sets out to tell them what that entails. The laws that are recapped in this sedrah fall into two broad categories: religious or ritual laws on the one hand, and civic or social laws on the other. I focus here on God's demand for a single place of worship after the people have entered the Land.

Filed Under: Israel | Jewish History | Social Action | Torah

Parasha Re-Eh: Food for Thought
August 3, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Larry Kaufman

I rarely get to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, where I went to college, but I still remember the steam-table cafeteria on 53rd Street with the sign in the window proclaiming, See Your Food. This week's Torah portion is called Re-eh, See, and among the ritual laws it presents are those concerning dietary practices: See, Your Food.

Fittingly for a sedrah in Devarim, the Book of Words, the authors anticipated the development of Microsoft Word, giving us a cut and paste rendition of the dietary laws presented in Leviticus, listing the creatures it is forbidden to eat, repeating the prohibition of consuming blood, and offering for the third time the law which has probably caused the most conversation over the millennia: Thou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother's milk.

A Midrash tells us that when God first says, Thou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother's milk, Moses turns to him and asks, "You mean no meat and dairy on the table at the same time?" God replies, Thou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother's milk. Moses thinks for a minute, then inquires, "You mean we need two sets of dishes?" God thunders, Thou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother's milk. Now Moses tries again, "You mean we have to wait six hours after eating meat until we can have dairy?" And God sighs, "All right, do it your way."

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Davar Acher: The Price is Right: The Importance of Innovation in Judaism's Survival
August 2, 2010 (1 Comment)

by David. B. Cohen
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The idea of "every person making Shabbes for himself or herself" has long been recognized as an obstacle to Jewish community. Rabbi Amy R. Perlin suggests Jewish survival depends on standardized communal practice. History supports her point. The question of whether Jerusalem would be the center of sacrificial rites for the Jewish nation after King Solomon's death led to the nation's dissolution, leaving the northern and southern tribes vulnerable to invasion.

Yet, Jewish survival is predicated on the dynamic tension between those who conserve the tradition and those who adapt it. I'd like to suggest that it is the persistence of Jews who challenged standardized communal practice and created new interpretations and rituals that ensured, and continues to ensure, Jewish survival.

Three historical examples bear this out: two millennia ago, the foresight and creativity of the P'rushim (Pharisees) gave the rabbis license to reinterpret Torah for their rapidly changing world. The Tz'dukim (Sadducees) clung to the increasingly irrelevant--and, after the Roman destruction of the Temple, entirely inaccessible--sacrificial past.

Filed Under: Jewish History | Torah

D'var Torah: R'eih: The Price of Doing "Whatever We Please"
August 2, 2010 (8 Comments)

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

"If every Jew does whatever s/he wants, wherever s/he wants, Judaism won't survive another generation."

You can imagine this as a Twitter entry (a tweet), the beginning of a scholarly article on Jewish survival, as an ad on the side of a bus in Jerusalem, or as the opening line to a High Holy Day sermon given by your rabbi a month from now. Yet, the idea is nothing new. For as long as there have been Jews, we have struggled with personal practice (or lack thereof) endangering communal survival. This week's Torah portion reveals just how much we have in common with our biblical ancestors, and how much we can learn from the tensions they encountered between the autonomy of individual practice and the burgeoning authority of a centralized religious institution.

My favorite lines of Torah are the ones that could be lifted off the parchment and placed into our world. These are the lines that show us what our ancestors were doing or feeling as they sought to encounter God as individuals within a community. So when we read Deuteronomy 12:8, "You shall not act at all as we now act here, each of us as we please . . ." we hear the voice of a community struggling with the consequences of permitting each individual to worship God however and wherever was personally meaningful.

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Awe and Activism
July 25, 2010

by Annie Belford
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Years ago, I hiked up a California mountain. I walked until I reached the peak, and as I looked out I saw the low clouds above covering the valley and ocean beyond; I could just make out the tops of ocean islands peeking through the cloud cover. As I took in the view, I was overcome with emotion. Never before had I felt so connected to the world around me or sensed holiness in nature. I was full of awe, and could only cry.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel discusses this kind of experience when he says, "awe is an intuition for the creaturely dignity of all things and their preciousness to God; a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something absolute" (God in Search of Man [New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1955], p. 75). When we experience awe, we gain deep respect and gratitude for the world around us--and ultimately, for God.

Before our Torah portion goes into the details of the challenging theology that Rabbi Perlin describes, Eikev reminds us of the necessity of these feelings: "For the Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill . . . a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack for nothing. . . When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Eternal your God for the good land given to you" (Deuteronomy 8:7, 9-10). Whether we find that awe through study, prayer, activism, or hiking up a mountain--in the end, it cannot help but commit us to change the way we relate to the world, to work for climate change and sustainability--and in the end, to connect us to "something absolute" in everything around us.

Rabbi Annie Belford serves Temple Sinai in Houston, Texas.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Eikev: Rain for All Seasons
July 25, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The climate debate over global warming rages in political and academic circles, commanding media attention daily. A recent article in The Washington Post¹ explored the dramatic change in Australia's rainfall, which has resulted in a decade of drought. Today, the Jordan River is more of a creek than a river, and geologists are worried that the Dead Sea is drying up. The thing most prayed for on our planet is "rain . . . in season" (Deuteronomy 11:14). The Torah teaches us that the world began as water, and the water crisis looms dark on our planet's current horizon. We need rain now, no less than our ancestors who farmed the soil of biblical Israel.

So our portion this week states, "If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Eternal your God and serving [God] with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain (m'tar) for your land in season, the early rain (yoreh) and the late [rain] (malkosh) (11:13ff.). Our Torah commentary² says that the yoreh falls in October and early November, and the malkosh in late March and early April with the majority of Israel's rain falling in December and January. When I complained that all it did was rain during two visits to Israel in December and February last year, Israelis reprimanded me: how dare I complain about Israel's most precious and cherished resource? Israelis appreciate the gifts of rain for arid soil to blossom.

Filed Under: Torah

Va-et'chanan
July 23, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL

The Ten Commandments
Repeated in this portion
But with some changes

Here, "observe" Shabbat
Before, it was "remember"
Two ways to "keep" it?

read MORE

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: I Was There; So Were You!
July 19, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Fred Greene
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

I enjoyed Rabbi Perlin's teaching about how to "talk Torah" and the power of engagement through conversations with others. There are few things as sweet as when my wife and I speak words of Torah around our own Shabbat dinner table with our daughters.

To reinforce Rabbi Perlin's argument, earlier in the parashah we read: "But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and to your children's children" (Deuteronomy 4:9). Moses is addressing the community long after the Israelites left Egypt and stood at Mount Sinai. Most of the people he was addressing were not even actual witnesses to those great events. Nevertheless, the next generation needed to hear about the former generation's experiences.

I often wonder what builds a strong Jewish identity. Information and knowledge are surely significant ingredients. But the most crucial ingredient is memory. We have to remember what we have seen and pass it on to the next generation. When we lose our memory, our people become vulnerable and our relationship with Torah and God becomes at risk.

Filed Under: Torah | Youth and Family Life

D'var Torah: Va-et'chanan: "Talking Torah"
July 19, 2010

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Parenting is not only the greatest blessing of my life, but it is also the most incredible learning experience of my Judaism. When my older son was a little boy he told me that God had a huge pair of scissors, for how else, he explained, could he cut the moon each night and put it in the sky for us to see? When my younger son was in preschool he taught me to appreciate the multicolored sunset when he declared that God must have the big box of crayons, the sixty-four pack with all the different colors (not the small package of eight), because the sky was so pretty, and the colors so abundant and bright. In teaching my children from the youngest age to know and love God, I discovered that they taught me far more in return. Their awe and wonder rekindled my faith and opened my eyes to God's daily miracles. I did not teach my children and give them Judaism to burden them. On the contrary, each law, each commandment, and each observance was my way of protecting them in a world that has so many dangers and temptations. As a parent, I am so grateful for the path of Torah and tradition. Torah has guided them far better than my husband and I ever could have done on our own.

The V'ahavta passage (Deuteronomy 6:5ff.) lays out the blueprint for how we are supposed to teach: talk Torah, God, and commandments "when you sit in your house, when you walk on your way, when you lie down and when you rise up." Torah was never something I expected my kids to learn solely in religious school. Torah and God were part of every dinner table discussion, every values lesson, every act of tzedakah (charitable giving and doing), and every family activity. Jewish discussion invites God and Torah into our homes and our lives. Having them make Jewish choices and live a Jewish life when they left our nest was our goal as parents; their regular observance of kashrut, Shabbat dinner and weekly worship, Torah study, and community service as adults has insured Jewish continuity for the next generation.

Filed Under: Torah | Youth and Family Life

Carrying the Torah with Pride
July 14, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Phyllis Sommer
Originally posted on Ima on (and off) the Bima

Today, I was greeted with this news about the arrest of Anat Hoffman, one of the leaders of Women of the Wall and the Reform movement in Israel.

From the Facebook page of Women of the Wall, this press release:

ANAT HOFFMAN TAKEN INTO POLICE CUSTODY FOR CARRYING TORAH
Chairperson forcefully removed by police for carrying Torah

Jerusalem, Israel - One of the leaders of the Reform movement in Israel and Women of the Wall (WOW) was arrested for holding a sefer Torah during a Rosh Chodesh celebration at the Western Wall.

Women of the Wall (WOW) gathered this morning for their monthly Rosh Chodesh services at 7 a.m. on the women's side of the Kotel. Anat Hoffman, with a sefer Torah in her arms, led the 150 women strong prayer group in song as it continued its celebration in a procession toward Robinson's Arch.

Moments after leaving the Wall, police confronted and blocked the procession and began menacingly to attempt to remove the Torah from Hoffman's arms. Hundreds of participants watched in shock and distress as the Torah was jostled by police.

Hoffman was detained under the pretext that she was not praying according to the traditional customs of the Kotel. Hoffman was taken into police custody and interrogated for five hours. Police claim that holding the sefer Torah is against the Supreme Court ruling. Police are currently consulting with Attorney General to determine her charges.

Anat and her lawyer stated that the act of carrying a Torah is not mentioned in the Supreme Court ruling. Women of the Wall stood in solidarity with Anat outside of the Kishle Police Station near Jaffa Gate. Hoffman was released from police custody and banned from the Kotel for 30 days.

The arrest of a woman on the first day of the month of Av is a harsh reminder of the price that Israeli society may pay for its religious intolerance and fanaticism. Tomorrow at 13:30, WOW will lobby at the Knesset for civil equality and pluralism at the Kotel, emphasizing the Wall as a holy site for all streams of Judaism and advocating for equal rights of women at the Wall.

This morning at URJ Olin-Sang Ruby Union Institute, Torah was read all over camp. Our readers were women and men. The Torah was carried by rabbis and teachers, counselors and staff - male and female. The Torah for which Anat was arrested is the Torah from which we teach and learn each and every day. The country that allowed for the arrest of a woman carrying the Torah is the country for which we pray for peace and safety each and every day.

Filed Under: Israel | Torah

Davar Acher: How Do We Choose That Path?
July 12, 2010

by John S. Friedman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

How many factors come into play when we choose our path, when we engage the Book of Deuteronomy or another Jewish text? Our mood, intelligence, education, Jewish literacy, theology, needs, world events, attention span: a myriad of factors come into play. We come to the text ready to confront it but always on our own terms, and there is no taking the "me" out of my relationship with Torah.

In our first parashah, D'varim, Moses describes the travels and experiences of the Israelites in wilderness, and sets the stage for the instructions and laws that he will impart to them. He prefigures a later discussion of law with the guidance to "Fear no one, for judgment is God's" (Deuteronomy 1:17).

But in a later verse, he provides what may seem to be a boilerplate example of Deuteronomy's theology: "And now, O Israel, give heed to the laws and rules that I am instructing you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Eternal, the God of your ancestors, is giving you" (4:1).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Destination: D'varim
July 12, 2010

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

I must confess that I do not have a great sense of direction. Thankfully, my new GPS offers me three choices of routes every time I enter a destination. In addition, I can customize my route based on whether I want to take highways or wish to avoid busy roads. And when I take a wrong turn or change my mind, the GPS simply reroutes my journey. Then there are times that I ignore the GPS and go the way that makes the most sense to me, based on my experience and knowledge after years of driving Virginia roads.

The process of studying Torah is very similar to the GPS experience. Many people confess that they do not have a great sense of direction when it comes to studying the Book of Deuteronomy, D'varim. This is perhaps the reason this "summer" book of Torah is the book least studied by modern Jews. It is our road less traveled. Yet, as we now embark on the study of the book together, perhaps we can find inspiration, and not fear, in the numerous routes available for our study. There are times when the literal word or words will move and inspire, and other times when scholarship and history will inform. There are times when the laws or theology will be comfortable for some, and problematic for others. Instead of worrying if we are approaching the text the "right way," what if we challenge ourselves to embrace the unique wonders and opportunities revealed by each route? It is the journey that is sacred, not in spite of the path we take but because of it.

Filed Under: Torah

Matot / Ma'sei
July 9, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL

Archaeological remains at Succoth, the first place the Hebrews camped after leaving Egypt

Desert travelogue.
Moses recalls the places
Where the people camped

Nothing but a list
With a few key exceptions
For special places

Elim - much water
In Rephidim, not so much
Later, Hor Mountain

At which point Moses
Takes a moment to recall
That's where Aaron died
read MORE

Filed Under: Torah

When Nature Becomes the Jewish Text
July 1, 2010

by Rabbi Paul Kipnes
(Originally posted on Or Ami I?)

Up at the Union for Reform Judaism's Camp Newman in Santa Rosa, California, nature itself has become the text from which to teach a whole Torah's worth of Jewish lessons. Daily, the four hundred plus campers, counselors and rabbinic faculty study the myriad of religious sources to illuminate the religious truths hidden right before our eyes. Little did I realize when I received my "camp faculty marching orders" from a way too young but exceedingly creative visionary Rosh Eidah (unit head) Aaron Bandler that I would be blessed to witness some truly amazing moments of holiness.

Lesson 1: Opening the Door to Inspiration
Twice this past week a group of wide-eyed Rishonim campers (8th and 9th graders) and I (camps' rabbinic dean) braved the 87 degree heat to venture beyond main camp to explore Jewish theology about God's role in nature. Armed with reusable water bottles and plenty of sunscreen, we made our way, boisterously, up a steep incline. We paused at the water tower mostly to catch our breath. There, we told the folk tale about a man who, searching for something of meaning, travels far and wide seeking inspiration, only to return to discover it right outside his back door. Sitting together, staring out over a stunning view of the far reaches of camp's spacious back country, the folk tale gave voice to a universal truth. Lost so often with our thumbs on the cellphone keyboard and our hearts caught up in the drama du jour, most of us miss out on the inspiring beauty surrounding us.

Filed Under: Torah | Youth and Family Life

D'var Torah: Parashat Pinchas
July 1, 2010

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Parashat Pinchas, one of the last parashiyot in the Book of Numbers, includes not just a diverse set of stories, but also different genres of material. It advances the narrative of Numbers, reports on (yet another) census, and details the offerings to be brought on a variety of sacred occasions. This portion is also known for its firm declaration that daughters can inherit their father's ancestral property holding, based on the suit pressed by the five daughters of Zelophehad. Their story points to the possibilities and the challenges we face when we seek guidance from the Torah.

In the Torah's imagination, land holdings in the Land of Israel, once assigned to specific individuals, should remain in the family line forever, passed down via the male heir. (The customs and rules of this religious and cultural practice are central to the story of the Book of Ruth.) In Numbers 27, the five daughters of Zelophehad--Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah--appear before Moses and the assembly gathered at the Tent of Meeting. Their father has died and left no male heirs; will his name and his relationship to the land be erased? "Give us a holding among our father's kinsmen!" they ask. Moses takes the issue to the Eternal who affirms the validity of the daughters' case--and further orders that henceforth daughters may inherit their fathers' land.

Filed Under: Torah

Galilee Diary: A New Song
June 30, 2010

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)

Now available from
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...How goodly, goodly are our tents;
We will yet return to an ancient melody.
-"Ancient melody," popular folk-song (and dance) by Michael Kashten and Amitai Ne'eman

Sing unto the Lord a new song, sing unto the Lord all the earth.
-Psalm 96:1

Three pop music experiences in one week:

On Saturday, at the biennial convention of the Israeli Reform Movement, one of the study sessions was devoted to the text of a song by the popular singer Ehud Banai, which strings together a collection of expressions from the lingo of telephone talk (perhaps it's a wrong number; no reception here; I hear you broken up; I'm waiting on the line; etc.); each verse ends with "Are you still with me? / Answer me." While it might be a song about love or friendship, it is hard to avoid the impression that it is a prayer, and that at the other end of the bad connection is God.

Filed Under: Israel | Jewish Living | Torah

Daughter of Diana...Daughter of Zelophehad
June 30, 2010 (2 Comments)

by JanetheWriter

Today marks the 30th day of shloshim for my mother and so tonight I will remove for the last time the kriah ribbon I have worn on my left lapel each day (except Shabbat) since her funeral on June 1. Although this external symbol of mourning will no longer be visible to me or to the world, the pain of my loss still burns sharply in my heart as I, ever conscious of the responsibilities that are now mine, ease back into living my life.

A stalwart feminist and a devoted student of Torah who marked the seasons of her life in Jewish time, my mother would, I think, be pleased to know that the end of shloshim corresponds to Pinchas, which next to Lech L'cha, her all time favorite, was among the many parshiot she enjoyed studying and discussing. In the same way that she felt a kinship with Abraham in Lech L'cha, so too did she empathize with the daughters of Zelophehad--five strong, independent women who, seeing injustice in the world, went about setting things right. And, like them, set things right she did. Whether teaching young children about equality for all in the 1950s, campaigning to gain support for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s or, as recently as this past winter, insisting--as an army of one--that her own beloved synagogue uphold the principles of church-state separation, my mother, in the words of one friend, "[built] coalitions, recogniz[ed] the importance of staying within the party...[and] worked towards justice for all those years."

And now, that responsibility passes to me. But more than pursuing equality and justice for all, my responsibility, as Rabbi Laurence Elis Milder suggests in the Monday edition of this week's Ten Minutes of Torah is to "speak [her] name and remember what [she] did...to tell our children and our loved ones the names of those who came before us, their deeds and virtues. When we do that, we are all the daughters of Zelophehad."

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Lifecycle | Torah

Davar Acher: Parashat Balak: Mishk'notecha Yisrael
June 17, 2010

by Karen Thomashow
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Kahn's preferred interpretation of the phrase V'ani t'filati l'cha, from the realm of what he calls midrashic hyperliteralism, "I am my prayer to You," is quite beautiful. This particular homiletic interpretation from our tradition is furnished to us from what Rabbi Kahn describes as the creativity of chazal, "our Sages of blessed memory."

Just as beautiful an interpretation of this phrase, V'ani t'filati l'cha, comes when we consider the next three words that together with the first three words make the more grammatically natural phrase, V'ani t'filati l'cha Adonai et ratzon, "As for me, may my prayer to You Adonai be at an opportune time." This particular rendering of the six-worded phrase is taken up by chazal in the Talmud, and made meaningful there as well. According to the Babylonian Talmud, B'rachot 8a, et ratzon, "an opportune time," is understood as the time of public worship. In other words, when in particular is our prayer to God best expressed? According to our tradition, it is when the community gathers together.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Parashat Balak: Mah Tovu--From Torah to Prayer
June 17, 2010

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The Rabbis of old are collectively referred to by subsequent generations as chachameinu zichronam livrachah (c hazal), "our teachers of blessed memory." When I take the time to fully appreciate their creativity and imagination, I too am always inspired by their memory and experience their blessing. In this teaching, I want to draw your attention to their literary and ritual creativity, and its expression in one of the poetic gems they bequeathed to us.

This week's Torah portion, Parashat Balak, includes famous words of blessing whose origins are a curse. Balak, the neighboring Moabite king, feels threatened by the power of the neighboring Israelite tribes and summons a leading, local rent-a-prophet named of Balaam to go forth and curse the Israelites. After much resistance--including the Torah's only instance of a talking ass--Balaam finally reaches a hill overlooking the Israelite camp where instead of cursing he declares words of blessing, most notably: Mah tovu ohalecha Ya'akov,mishk'notecha Yisrael, "How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel" (Numbers 24:5). This verse, the climax of the Torah's lengthy and burlesque narrative of how the commissioned curses are spoken instead as blessings, is taken up by the later Rabbis and, as often happens to biblical verses, is "repurposed" in a new, liturgical setting; it becomes the opening line of the daily, synagogue liturgy.

Filed Under: Torah

Kadosh - Are You Holy?
June 16, 2010

by Cantor Sally Neff
Originally posted on Cantor's Canvas

This past week's parshah, Parshat Korach, bothers me every time. Korach says, "You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and G-d is in their midst." Korach is the villain of this story. His motives are not positive. Korach wants to steal power from Moses and is a demagogue, rallying hundreds behind him. Like some other demagogues, however, Korach's overt message is not so disturbing. It is appealing. The Torah itself tells us, after all, that we are a holy people. Doesn't it?

In parshat K'doshim, Lev 19:1, we read, "G-d spoke to Moses saying, "Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: "You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal G-d, am holy."

What is Korach saying that G-d had not previously said?

Korach says that all the people ARE holy, whereas G-d says, "you SHALL be holy." The key is the tense. I believe that holiness is a process, not a state of being. If we spend our lives pursuing right causes and doing mitzvot, we walk the path of holiness. In fact, the word for Jewish law, halachah, comes from the same root as holeich - the verb to go. If we are already holy, how can we improve? How can our lives develop? We can only become holy when we pass on from this world and become a part of G-d. That is the only time when there is no more room for improvement or change. Until then, we can always grow, we can always become, we can always walk the path.

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Davar Acher: Parashat Chukat
June 13, 2010

by Michael S. Friedman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

In his commentary, Rabbi Kahn focuses on the concept of chukim, which he adroitly defines as, "those mitzvot that do not appear to have a particular purpose and whose meaning, as far as we can discern, is in the performance; the fulfillment of the prescribed act is its own reward."

However, while Rabbi Kahn uses kashrut as a blueprint for how to find meaning in a chok, "law," the red heifer is quite a different story. There are many who have found meaning in observing the mitzvah of kashrut, even if we don't know why we are commanded to observe it. However, the mitzvah of the red calf is impossible to fulfill--both because no red calf has been found in Israel in 2000 years and because the Temple no longer stands. We cannot perform this ritual no matter how much we may desire to. So how are we to find meaning in a chok when we simply cannot fulfill the prescribed act? By definition, the performance of the red heifer ritual cannot be "its own reward," as Rabbi Kahn says, if it cannot be performed.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Chukat: Ta'amai Hamitzvot - Rationales for the Commandments
June 13, 2010

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Ben Bag-Bag, a Tanna (Mishnah-era rabbi), taught about the Torah: "Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it."1 If we only look hard enough and are creative with our interpretation, the Rabbis taught, ever-wider and deeper meanings and insight will be revealed. The Rabbis could not imagine the idea that any verse in the Torah--let alone an entire episode--did not have enduring spiritual purpose or ultimate meaning. "Just keep looking," they might say.

This week's Torah portion, Chukat, details what to later generations is surely one of the most inscrutable and strange rituals of biblical religion. Numbers 19 is devoted to the ritual of the parah adumah, the "red heifer." An unblemished, healthy heifer of an unusual and symbolically significant color is ritually killed and burned along with aromatic wood and spices. The ashes are then mixed with pure water and used in a purification rite to ritually cleanse people who have touched a human corpse. This mixture is so powerful that the priest who performs the rite is himself rendered temporarily impure through contact with the ashes and water.

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: An Argument with Intention
June 7, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Joel Simonds
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

"Any controversy that is for the sake of Heaven shall in the end be resolved. A controversy that is not for the sake of Heaven shall not be resolved. Which controversy was for the sake of Heaven? [The controversy] between Hillel and Shammai. Which controversy was not for the sake of Heaven? [The controversy] of Korach and his band." (ed. and trans. Leonard Kravitz and Kerry M. Olitzky, Pirke Avot 5:17) [New York: URJ Press, 1993] p. 85).

An argument, if done with the right intention, can be a holy and spiritual endeavor; however, an argument with a destructive nature can lead to unholy actions.

Although Jewish law often followed the opinion of Hillel, both schools accepted the decisions without animosity toward the other. The arguments of Hillel and Shammai were at such a level of holiness and respect for God that often both opinions were recorded yet neither opinion determined the law. From this, "future generations would learn not to persist in their opinion . . . for the two greatest scholars [Hillel and Shammai] did not persist in their opinions" (Mishnah, Eduyot 1:4).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Korach: What's Your Problem?
June 7, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

An Israeli slang expression from the 1970s aptly describes the response many modern readers bring to this week's portion, Korach: Ma bashcha? In idiomatic English, this is best rendered as "What's your problem?" Unusually, Korach takes its name from the portion's protagonist (or villain), Korah; it is rare for a biblical antihero to get such attention. For us, though, Korah is a problematic figure; his protest does not appear to be so outrageous! Moses does not even attempt to refute his argument, but instead storms off and appeals for heaven to demonstrate who is really right. According to the Torah's narrative, God is extremely displeased too--such that Korah and his supporters who dared to speak out are literally swallowed up.

The hostility the text and tradition express towards Korah may recall our puzzlement at the harsh treatment the second of the four children receives in the Passover Haggadah. The second child is called rasha, "wicked"--but the child's question does not strike our ears as wicked at all: "What is the meaning of this service to you?" While the tradition reads this question as excluding the asker-- "What does it mean to you and not to me"--we may hear this question as being a sincere, listening query, the effort by one person to not prejudge and instead be open to the truth and experience of others. The Haggadah's answer begins with an "I-statement": "Because of what the Eternal did for me when I came forth from Egypt, I do this." But then it quickly escalates: "If you had been there, you would not have been redeemed!" Perhaps it is not the individual speakers whose qualities are characterized in this famous passage but the quality of the conversations that take place: some are wise, some are wicked, some are simple, and so on.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Sh'lach L'cha: The Blue Resembles the Sea, the Sea Resembles the Sky, the Sky Resembles God's Throne
June 1, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

In Numbers 15 at the end of this week's portion, we are instructed about the mitzvah of tzitzit:

[37] The Eternal One said to Moses as follows: [38] Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes [tzitzit] on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner. [39] That shall be your fringe; look at it and recall all the commandments of the Eternal and observe them, so that you do not follow your heart and eyes in your lustful urge. [40] Thus you shall be reminded to observe all My commandments and to be holy to your God. [41] I am the Eternal your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I, the Eternal, your God. (Numbers 15:37-41)

These verses are the Torah-foundation for the mitzvah of wearing a tallit. While in the Torah the tzitzit are presented as a spiritual practice--a physical symbol that recalls all of the commandments and a summons to holiness--they also have been long understood as a marker of Jewish distinctiveness, a sartorial tribal label.

This biblical passage and the mitzvah associated with it were very problematic for early Reform Jews. Eighteenth-century American Jews sought to fit into wider American society and modernize Jewish practice to conform to contemporary aesthetic and cultural standards. They subjected the entirety of the received Jewish religious and cultural tradition to a rigorous critique in search of what was "essential" to Judaism and what could be set aside. In the Pittsburgh Platform, 1885, American Reform rabbis declared:

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: B'haalot'cha
May 24, 2010

by Ralph Mecklenburger
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Another interesting thing for moderns to note about the introductory verses of Parashat B'haalot'cha is that though most of the details of the wilderness sanctuary sound very foreign to us, the candelabrum of which the passage speaks is familiar. The old Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation calls it a "candlestick," and the new JPS renders it "lampstand."* For contemporary Jews, the Hebrew might be clearer: it is "menorah."

We are apt to think of Chanukah when we hear the word menorah, which for us has become an English word. This menorah (Numbers 8:2 ff) however, had seven branches, three on each side of a central stem. It is a Shabbat menorah with seven "lamps," neirot for seven days of the week, as described in detail in Exodus 25:31-39.

The nine-branch Chanukah design was borrowed from the Shabbat design. In Exodus, and now again in Numbers, the Torah stresses that the menorah must be made of pure gold. Metallurgists suggest pure gold would have been too soft, and skeptics have noted that even if gold was not quite as expensive in antiquity as it is today, the cost of such a large piece--not inlaid with gold like the Ark, but entirely of gold--would have been astronomical!

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah - B'haalot'cha: This Passage Is Out of Place
May 24, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

This week's Torah portion, B'haalot'cha, begins with the instructions for the lifting up of "the lamps," haneirot, to illuminate the Tabernacle. The initial letter of the word, "lamp," neir, is nun. This same letter, nun, also marks the portion's most distinctive passage in Numbers 10:35-36. These two hard-to-understand verses describe the movement of the Ark:

When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say:
Advance, O Eternal One!
May Your enemies be scattered,
And may Your foes flee before You!
And when it halted, he would say:
Return, O Eternal One,
You who are Israel's myriads of thousands!

In the Torah scroll, these two verses are surrounded at each end by an inverted nun. (An inverted nun also appears multiple times in Psalm 107.) These special characters can be found in every known Torah scroll, old or new. And, the special nature of this eighty-five letter passage was noted, and its significance debated, in the Babylonian Talmud. In Shabbat 115b, we read: "The Holy One, Blessed be, made marks on this passage, above and below." Marks above the letters are found in several places in the Torah (for example, the dots above the word "kissed" in Genesis 33:4). The inverted nun is the remnant of a very old tradition to indicate that this small section of Torah is not quite right. Sifrei, a midrashic collection about the Book of Numbers from the same time as the Talmud, specifically says that there dots above and below each letter in this passage. By the time of the discussions recorded in the Talmud, the tradition of treating this passage in a special way was firmly established, but no one knew why!

Filed Under: Torah

The Bit Players Who Change Our Lives
May 17, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Larry Kaufman

When he reached Shechem, a man ("ish") came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, "What are you looking for?" He answered, "I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?" The man said: "They have gone from here, for I heard them say: 'Let us go to Dothan.'" So Joseph followed his brothers, and found them at Dothan.
-- Genesis 37:14-37:17

When we studied this passage last week in Torah class, Rabbi Andrea London remarked on this nameless "ish" who came into Joseph's life, and, with one question and one answer, changed his destiny. Who, she asked, have been the bit players who have been on your stage only momentarily, but whose impact has nonetheless changed your life?

Almost immediately, two people came to mind.

Sara Palay was my boss when, as a senior in high school, I was teaching Hebrew to the second graders at the Euclid Avenue Temple in Cleveland. One day she asked where I was applying to college, and I said I was thinking seriously about Oberlin. "You can't go to Oberlin," she decreed. "You need a college with Jewish life."

Although I hadn't given Jewish life on campus a moment's thought in my screening of colleges, I instantly realized that she was right, that it was something I should have been thinking about. Oberlin fell off my radar screen - I was not going to find my brothers there. Instead, I went to the University of Chicago where Jewish opportunities abounded alongside the intellectual opportunities that contributed so greatly to making me who I am today. Neither Sara nor I, I'm sure, recognized how important that casual conversation would turn out to be.

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Davar Acher: The Meaning Behind the Blessing
May 17, 2010 (5 Comments)

by Elizabeth Sacks
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Parashat Naso is most well-known for the threefold priestly benediction. Many commentators have explored the reasons that this blessing is formulaically pleasing. But what does the blessing actually mean? What about these words causes us to hold onto this blessing in particular?

The Eternal bless you and protect you! (Numbers 6:24)
The Rabbis teach us that "bless you" refers to material goods in this world, specifically the blessings of bounty mentioned in Deuteronomy 28:1-14 (Sifre on Numbers 6:24). In contrast, "protect you" requests God's shielding presence over those material goods (Rashi on Numbers 6:24).

The Eternal One deal kindly and graciously with you! (6:25)

A literal translation of the beginning of this verse is, "make His (God's) face to shine on you . . ."* Citing the use of the word ya-eir, meaning to "shine" or to "light," the Rabbis claim that the opening clause asks for God to enlighten us with Torah (Sforno), while "deal graciously with you," asks that we find favor in the eyes of others (Sifrei).

The Eternal God bestow [divine] favor upon you and grant you peace! (6:26)

Finally, the beginning of the third verse requests that God suppress Divine anger in the case of sin (Rashi). The last phrase of the blessing is unique in its straightforward appeal for peace. For "one may have prosperity . . . but if there is no peace, it is all worthless" (Sifra, B'chukotai).

According to the Rabbis, then, each line of the priestly benediction expresses two separate desires - each line contains one idea of earthly benefit (material goods, finding favor among other people, peace) and one idea of Divine relationship (God's protection, God's Torah, and God's mercy). Perhaps, then, the priestly benediction is so compelling because the words recognize that we wish to be fulfilled in both realms of our lives--the earthy and the spiritual. Only then can we truly be blessed with the last request--shalom--wholeness.

*See The Torah: A Modern Commentary, W. Gunther Plaut, ed. (New York: URJ Press, 2005), p. 930

Cantor Elizabeth Sacks is associate cantor at Central Synagogue in New York, New York.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah - Naso: What is a Blessing?
May 17, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Parashat Naso, the second portion in the Book of Numbers, incorporates some of the Torah's most challenging passages and one of its most beautiful ones. The Priestly Benediction, Numbers 6:22-27, is one of the most ancient texts of the Torah and is probably one of humanity's oldest prayer texts in continual use. In Jerusalem, archaeologists have found a plaque with the identical words to those found in the Torah dating from as early as the seventh century b.c.e. In Hebrew, we can discern a very careful construction in these three verses, creating "a rising crescendo of 3, 5, and 7 words, respectively" (Jacob Milgrom, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers. JPS, 1990, p. 51). Ancient listeners, attuned to hearing that which we only notice after careful reading, would also have appreciated that the number of consonants, stressed syllables, and total syllables all increased in orderly progression (15, 20, 25; 3, 5, 7; 12,14,16, respectively).

Commentators have been puzzled by the apparent power of the priests to bless the people: "Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel" (Numbers 6:23). In the Talmud, Rabbi Ishmael suggests: "The priests bless Israel and the Holy One blessed be blesses the priest" (Babylonian Talmud, Chullin 49a). This appears to be the meaning of the verse that immediately follows the blessing (vs. 27): "Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them." However, the idea that humans--even if they are biblical priests--have the power to compel God's blessing has been overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of our historical commentators; they understand verse 27 as "The priests ('they') shall link My name with the people of Israel and I ('the Eternal') will bless the people (them)." (see The JPS Torah Commentary, pp. 50-51; see also Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar, [Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1980], pp. 61-63)

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: The Purity of the Wilderness
May 10, 2010

by Rabbi Mark L. Shook
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Kahn helps us to confront the confusion and uncertainty in our prayer life by reminding us that encounter with the Divine often takes place "B'midbar . . . in the wilderness." Spiritual encounters are sometimes disorganized and unexpected. As worthy and true as Kahn's central point is, we would be missing something basic to our heritage if we left it at that. The wilderness is so much more. The untamed and unspoiled desert--hamidbar--is also a symbol of spiritual purity.

The "bush aflame, . . . yet not consumed," (Exodus 3:2) is not found by Moses on a street corner in the storehouse city of Raamses. Moses encounters God b'midbar. Several hundred years later, the prophet Elijah flees from Queen Jezebel to save his life (I Kings 19:2). He seeks no refuge with some other ruler in an urban fortress. Instead, he journeys to the wilderness, very much alone, in search of the God for whom he has risked his life. Elijah finds God b'midbar. In spite of Exodus chapters full of Mishkan (Tabernacle) construction details and a complete a guide to Israelite animal sacrifices in the Book of Leviticus, there is another understanding of hamidbar--the wilderness--presented by the prophet Jeremiah, "For when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifice"(Jeremiah 7:22). Jeremiah is addressing Judah as if there were no wilderness sacrifices or sanctuary at all. B'midbar, Israel was pure and uncorrupted by idolatry.

Encounters with God take place b'midbar, because there the corruption of the settled world and the closeness of walled cities cannot interfere with Divine-human interaction. Torah is not revealed from a podium in a city square (Nehemiah 8 notwithstanding) but rather from a craggy mountain summit that reminds us of the power of God and the frailty of humanity.

Rabbi Mark L. Shook is senior rabbi at Congregation Temple Israel in St. Louis, Missouri.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: B'midbar: Encountering the Sacred in Uncharted Lands
May 10, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Yoel H. Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

A core teaching of Jewish spiritual practice is our readiness to read the Torah in many different ways. We find meaning and significance across entire books; or we zoom in, such that an individual letter or even an accent mark fills our field of vision and discloses sacred truth. The weekly parashah is, of course, the most common "unit" for informing our reading. This week's Torah portion, B'midbar, is the first in the Book of Numbers. The books of the Torah (and many classical Hebrew books) are named after their first important word; thus, B'midbar is the name of both the fourth book of the Five Books of the Torah and of the weekly Torah portion. This year, for me, it is the name of the portion itself that speaks to me, crying out in Rashi's wonderful expression, "Darsheini! Explain me!" (see, e.g., Rashi on Genesis 1:1). B'midbar means "in the wilderness," "in the wild place," "wandering in unchartered lands."

The parashah begins: "Vaiy'dabeir Adonai el-Mosheh b'midbar Sinai b'ohel mo-eid . . . " In The Torah: A Modern Commentary, revised edition, the translation reads: "On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Eternal One spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting . . ." (W. Gunther Plaut, gen. ed. [New York: URJ Press, 2005] p. 899). The crucial word, b'midbar, is not at the beginning in this version. Seeking to convey the force of the Hebrew in idiomatic English, the translators reversed the sequence of phrases, moving the date up before the location. A more precise, word-for-word translation is: "And Adonai spoke unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt . . ."

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Justice or Stewardship: Humility in the Face of Covenant
May 3, 2010

by Bennett F. Miller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

With this double portion, we conclude the Book of Leviticus. B'har/B'chukotai is more than an ending; it is a warning to remember that the earth does not belong to us--the earth belongs to the Divine. What we do--the meaning of our actions--is not about right or wrong, charity or justice. For the Torah, our human deeds reflect an understanding of who we are in relation to the Divine and the world in which we live.

Everything in life is about relationships. Are we close with our loved ones or do we keep ourselves apart? Do we engage with our neighbors or do we build barriers that separate us? Do we seek through our actions to be closer to the Divine or do we permit ourselves an estrangement that eventually leads to our own destruction and the destruction of our world?

This is the concern of B'har/B'chukotai. For us, as Jews, such a warning should be important. The nature of the covenant between us and the Divine is that we are stewards of the earth that has been given to us as a gift. The kind of stewardship we provide determines how we care for our world and for each other. If our stewardship is one of arrogance, then we have missed the point of what it means to be a Jew. Neither should it be of complacency. B'har/Bchokotai calls for humility in all that we do, for such humility is what leads to blessing. If we are humble in the way we cherish the earth, then we will not abuse it. If we are humble in the way we approach our fellow human beings, then we will understand how fortunate we are and what a privilege it is to share with others this incredible world given to us by the Divine.

Our stewardship of the world should possess an understanding that what we do does matter, that our actions reflect our true beliefs, and that such actions have consequences.

Rabbi Bennett F. Miller is senior rabbi of Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He serves on the faculty of the doctor of ministry program at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He earned his DMin at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Performing the Mitzvot that Make God Holy
April 26, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Peter Kessler
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Rooks Rapport presents some very significant questions when he asks, "How Do We Make God Holy?" At the end of his d'var Torah, he makes the connection between our repairing the brokenness in the world and repairing the brokenness that has resided within God since the first moment of Creation. As one of the few of the last holdouts of the classical Reform Movement, I find a different way to "make God holy."

I believe that God isn't broken unless we choose to break Him. The spark of God lives within each of us, if we only recognize that the power to glorify the Creator is in our own hands--if we only choose to perform the deeds of loving kindness that we have the potential to do. While the prayer that is cited has some beautiful images, my belief is that our Reform Movement was founded on the more "practical" rituals of repairing the world, rather than the more "spiritual" rituals of creative prayer. Yes, prayer is an essential part of the way we live as Jews, but glorifying God in poetry or prose does not make God holy. Holiness comes in the form of deeds we perform that help to complete our world, complete ourselves, and in the process, repair the parts of the God within each of us that may have been "broken,",or merely neglected.

On a philosophical level, God does "need" us, but on a more practical level, the God that needs us is found within the deeds we fulfill ourselves.

Rabbi Peter Kessler is the senior rabbi at Temple Ohev Sholom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Emor: How Do We Make God Holy?
April 26, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The point of being Jewish is to have a relationship with God. Yet, a relationship implies a certain give and take, and there is precious little in the Torah that talks about what we have that God could possibly need. What can we give to God? That doesn't mean we don't have a whole section on sacrifice in this week's portion, Emor, and throughout the Book of Leviticus. But, it does mean that there really isn't any indication that our actions here on earth affect God in some way that is bounded by the relationship.

And then, for one precious moment, our portion steps aside from the questions of sacrificial rite and priestly purity to ponder this question: how do we make God holy? In Leviticus 22:32 we read: "You shall not profane My holy name, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the Israelite people--I Adonai who sanctify you."

Translation issues become important here. The text says v'nikdashti, "and I will be made holy" amidst the Children of Israel. Or, in other words, "You will make Me holy just as I, Adonai, have made you holy."

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Don't Make it Personal
April 18, 2010

by Stephen Kahn
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Every now and then, while I am driving around, I listen to AM talk radio to hear the latest fare from commentators from the "right" and the "left." Based on what I hear, it appears the sole purpose of these forums is for the program host to make his or her point, and to position or critique the "other side"--those who think or feel differently about a particular idea--through "verbal assassinations." All I can think is that civil discourse and the framing of arguments have become full contact sports where the only one left standing is the one with the loudest and most hateful voice.

The Holiness Code of the Book of Leviticus contains many remedies for the substance of our arguments against both the ills of our society, and more specifically, how we confront those with whom we disagree. In one verse of the code, Moses admonishes our ancestors, "You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account" (Leviticus 19:17).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Acharei Mot/K'doshim: A Rambling Rose
April 18, 2010

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

As the great flood story begins, we learn that Noah was "a righteous man; in his generation he was above reproach" (Genesis 6:9) and we wonder what kind of compliment has Noah just been paid. After all, what does it mean to be the most righteous person in a generation so wicked as to be drowned for the depths of its sin? It is a careful comparison to be sure, but in the end we know only this: Noah was a righteous man.

This week's portion carries a similarly dubious honor. Acharei Mot/K'doshim is the darling of the entire Book of Leviticus! Rabbis wait until the seventeenth chapter just for the chance to share their insights on these words, which we call the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26). And yet I wonder, is the Holiness Code just the Noah of its generation? How great a compliment is it to say that these words of righteousness far surpass the rest of a book in which animal sacrifice, ritual cleanliness, leprosy, acne, and afterbirth are our usual subjects of concern?

By the standards of Leviticus, this week's parashah is a gold mine of opportunities. By the standards of Genesis, it is a story without beginning, middle, or end. In these few brief chapters, our subject ranges from celebration of the Sabbath to honoring one's parents to refraining from idol worship to the proper time to eat an animal sacrifice. Then it is off to agricultural law, then civil disputes: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not swear falsely, then, thou shalt not steal once again. Then it goes on to the subject of contracts and disputes: be fair with your workers, respect the disabled, be evenhanded in judgment. Then there are the duties of the heart and a series of laws about what to think beneath what you do: don't bear a grudge, don't hate someone in your heart, love your neighbor as yourself, and on and on it goes. The Holiness Code is the original "rambling rose." There is no rhyme or reason to her verses. She just babbles on like a never-ending stream.

read MORE

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Affirming Tazria/M'tzora
April 12, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Susan Bulba Carvutto
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

My hands are peeling from frequent washing. At our Friday evening Oneg Shabbat, we no longer tear the challah with our hands; now, we slice it with a knife and pick it up with a napkin. Hebrew school children are not welcome as visitors in our local nursing home. College students who are sick are isolated in special dorms or driven home by their parents, who then refuse contact with the rest of the community. It's 5770, and swine flu has struck.

The Torah portion of Tazria/M'tzora seems totally relevant. Like Rabbi Joe Rooks Rapport, I once thought of this parashah as alien and disgusting. It was a bar mitzvah student, Zachary Lennett, who taught me to look at it differently. The year of his bar mitzvah, public health officials were worrying about a worldwide pandemic of avian flu that never materialized here in the United States. In Zachary's d'var Torah, he pointed out the wisdom of Leviticus 13-14 as public health policy: isolation of those with symptoms, frequent checking by the priest as medical-religious expert, and use of water for purification.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Tazria/M'tzora, Again and Again
April 12, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Imagine, if you will, that today is not today, and you are not who you thought you were when you woke up this morning. Imagine that today is really some years prior to today, and you are here to meet with the rabbi in preparation for becoming bar or bat mitzvah. I get to be the rabbi in this fantasy, after all, some things must remain constant in the universe.

You have arrived filled with a sense of awe--that odd combination of fear, excitement, and anticipation. Today is the day on which we shall unfold the pages of the Torah to find your portion within it and begin a process of study through which you will become a master of the text.

We open a large and imposing-looking book, and you learn your first words of Torah; the name of your portion is Tazria/M'tzora. Now comes the part where the learned rabbi, that's me, remember, points out to you the important themes of the portion. We will choose to spend the next several months of our lives learning and perfecting these themes for the day when you will become a teacher of Torah on the Sabbath morning as you come of age.

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Holy Connections, One Meal at a Time
April 2, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Zachary R. Shapiro
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The first time I flew on El Al, I was surprised about the option to order a kosher meal. "Aren't all meals on El Al kosher?" I asked my sister. "Yes," she answered. "But there's kosher, and then there's super-kosher."

I remember another time when a Jewish friend in college was upset during Passover that his shrimp was fried in a bread batter. (The shellfish was OK, but bread on Passover was unthinkable!)

Let's face it. Jews often have a unique approach to food. Whether it's the age-old dilemma of not being able to sit down to one meal without discussing the logistics of the next one or arguing over charoset recipes, food is what has grounded our identity for thousands of years. read MORE

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah - Sh'mini: Your Body is a Temple
April 2, 2010

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Once upon a time in a parallel universe that has yet to emerge, just one year from now, I had--or perhaps I should say, I will have--the most interesting experience: my heart stood still. I prefer not to think of it as a "heart attack" as if my heart itself had suddenly turned against my body with the intent to kill. I will prefer to consider it, in this parallel track of my existence, as a moment of pause providing for my life a greater measure of intent.

My father had his first heart attack at the age of fifty-three. I am fifty-two now, on this path of my life, and instead of simply waiting for my heart to wait for me, along with the life-changing challenges that by-pass surgery would represent, I carry within me a tiny metal stent smoothing the flow of life giving blood to and from the heart that beats steadily within me.

I got the same speech they give everyone after heart surgery, telling me it was time to make some changes in my life: eat better, exercise more, stop smoking, stop drinking, take more time for the calm of meditation and prayer. The difference for me, and I suppose the irony as well, is that I have already done most of those things and I have been doing them for most of my life. I don't drink, I don't smoke--aspirin and antacids were my only drugs. I actually use all the exercise equipment I buy from those TV infomercials. I haven't eaten meat for more than a decade. And as for meditation and prayer, well let's just say, I do that considerably more often than most.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah - Shabbat Chol HaMo-eid Pesach: The Cleft in the Rock
March 29, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah

On this Sabbath during Passover, we take a break from the sacred and the profane, from sin and sacrifice, from what fits and what is unfit; we set aside all things Leviticus and step into another world. This week's special portion carries within it one of the most luminous and awe-inspiring images in all of the Torah: Moses, cradled gently in the hand of God, emerges from the cleft of the rock to glimpse a sight of the Divine Presence just as the Glory of God passes by (Exodus 33:21-23).

This vision is one of the most unabashedly human representations of God as can be found anywhere in the Bible. God has a face, which Moses cannot see. God has a hand, which protects Moses until the moment when God's shining Presence has passed by. And God has a back, which Moses glimpses momentarily, though we have precious little description of what this vision of "God from behind" may have looked like.

Such anthropomorphisms--in this case, visions of God in human form--drive the classic interpreters of the Torah to distraction. They try desperately to recast these physical characteristics as metaphor and literary device rather than the touchable, tangible, actual descriptions of God's Presence which, we might--on their surface-- consider them to be. So strong is the pull of the second commandment not to create for ourselves a picture or an idol of God's physical form that the very allusion to any human characteristics becomes the source of endless consternation and debate.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

A Love Story
March 24, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Valerie Jones
Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, TX

I was young and inexperienced. (That should serve as an excuse if I need one). No one told me when I read Leviticus at 19-years-old that I shouldn't fall in love it. Yes, you read that correctly - Leviticus. The book of the Torah that discusses pus, rashes, menstruation, rotting skin diseases, and has enough blood spatter from temple sacrifices to keep the team from CSI busy for another hundred episodes. Yes, that Leviticus.

"I've got to talk to the rabbi," said a friend of mine studying for an adult Bat Mitzvah, "because I'm not reading anything from Leviticus." It's that kind of book, one that prompts strong reactions. Those who have a Leviticus reading for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah are said to have a "bad portion". On the biggest day of a Bar/Bat Mitzvah's young life, after the studying, planning the party, and relatives arriving from distance towns, in walks Leviticus, forcing some fresh faced youngster to stammer out the Hebrew words for 'unknown discharge from a bodily orifice' in front of friends and family.

Morbid curiosity maybe, but love? Really?

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: Sometimes Shmutz is Just Shmutz
March 21, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Jack P. Paskoff
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The custodian of our congregation is somewhat eccentric. For our purposes, it's only important to know that while he pays little attention to personal grooming and dress, he is meticulous in the work he does for all of us. He places Oneg Shabbat tables perfectly equidistant from each other by counting floor boards in our old wooden floor and makes sure that tablecloths hang down the exact same length on all four sides, measuring with a ruler. As we are a very small minority in our largely Christian community, I have more than once had our congregation identified to me as "the church across from the hospital where the man is out there every Friday afternoon, regardless of weather, polishing the brass railings." Watching him gather trash after a full morning of religious school or after a wedding or bar or bat mitzvah celebration, sorting the recyclables from the garbage, I am keenly aware that sometimes shmutz is just shmutz, no matter what exalted activity produced it. On the other hand, the people who deal with our shmutz are often invisible to us.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah - Tzav: On the Holiness of Schmutz
March 21, 2010

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

A young man comes to a rabbi and says, "Rabbi, I would like to study Talmud with you."
"Very nice," says the rabbi. "May I ask what background you have in Talmud?"
"None," says the young man.
"I see," says the Rabbi. "Have you studied the Mishnah, which lies at its core?"
"No," says the budding scholar.
"Yes, I see, and what of the Torah; have you studied Torah and its commentaries?"
"No . . ."
"Yes, well, you see young man, the Talmud is a very complex and complicated art. May I ask, what makes you think you are ready for such a task?"
The young man smiles patiently. "Well, Rabbi, I have an undergraduate degree from Harvard, and my MBA from Wharton. You teach. I am sure I will be able to learn."

"I'll tell you what," says the sage. "I will give you a test. If you pass, I will teach you Talmud. If not, maybe you will start by joining my Torah study class."
"Fine," says the young man, indulgently. "You can give me a test. How many questions will be on it?"
"Just one," says the Rabbi. "Are you ready?"
"Two men come down the same chimney. One comes out with soot on his face. The other's face is clean. Who will wash his face?"
Without even taking a moment to think, the young man replies: "The one with a dirty face."
"No," says the Rabbi. "The one with a dirty face sees the other with a clean face and assumes that his face is clean. Why would he want to wash a clean face?"

The young man smiles. "OK, you got me. But, give me another question and I will pass your test."
"You would like another question?" says the Rabbi.
"Yes," says the young man.
"Alright," says the rabbi. "Two men come down the same chimney. One comes out with soot on his face. One's face is clean. Who will wash his face?"
The young man smiles oddly, thinks a bit, and then says: "The one with a clean face."
"No," says the Rabbi. "They both will."

Filed Under: Torah

The Torah in Haiku: Vayikra
March 19, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL
(Originally published in The Torah in Haiku)

Vayikra: G-d called

Does G-d call us today?

What are you hearing?

Two years ago, this blog began with an entry for Vayikra. Now The Torah In Haiku has about 250 visitors a month, more than 100 fans on Facebook and almost 150 followers on Twitter. I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time to share this fun way of exploring Torah.

Filed Under: Torah

Brother, Where Art Thou?
March 16, 2010

by Larry Kaufman
Also posted at LarryKaufman.Wordpress.com

Maybe because we've been reading on Shabbat about the brothers Moses and Aaron, I was particularly sensitized to brothers when our Torah study class recently read Jacob's dying exhortation to his sons. What particularly struck me was the efforts of several Biblical translators to avoid translating achim as brothers.

Our teacher, Rabbi Andrea London, along with many class members, had the Women's Torah Commentary, and most of the others had the revised Plaut Commentary, both of which present Chaim Stern's translation of Genesis. My text was the Art Scroll Stone Chumash with a translation by Nosson Scherman.

The line we were talking about reads, in the Hebrew, Shimon v'Levi achim, klei chamass m'cheirotaichem. Left to my own devices, and aided by my own desk dictionary, I would render this Simeon and Levi are brothers; their weapons are instruments of violence. (My Ben-Yehuda-Weinstein Pocket Dictionary also offers kinsman or countryman as possible ach translations, but neither of these figure in the translations of Genesis I consulted.)

Seeing achim, I was startled to hear Rabbi London read Simeon and Levi are partners; instruments of violence are their plan. And my surprise was only enhanced when I looked at the translation I had in front of me: Simeon and Levi are comrades; their weaponry is a stolen craft.

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Still Waiting to Hear God's Call
March 15, 2010

by Richard A. Siegel
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Rapport ends his d'var Torah by noting the title of the book and the parashah are taken from the opening word, vayikra, "and [God] called," which he interprets to mean that "God calls us to holiness, to a life of meaning, to a path of harmony."

This is a valiant attempt to redeem Leviticus for the modern reader. But I can't help thinking that if the central message is the search for holiness, surely it could have been delivered more poetically, more invitingly, more . . . spiritually. Should not God's call to us to find holiness in life be rendered in words flowing with holiness and piercing immediacy themselves?

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Learning to Love Leviticus
March 15, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Joe Rooks Rapport
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Genesis is easy to love: its soaring narratives, its rich poetics, the family dramas whose lessons are as old as they are new. Exodus tells the tales of the beginnings of our people. It retains much of the beauty of the Genesis narratives and it includes all the drama of our journey from slavery to freedom.

Very little "happens" in Leviticus. The whole book takes place in one month, the first month of the second year of the Exodus, and it all occurs at or around Mount Sinai. The few narrative elements are fragmentary and even these are usually provided simply for the explanation of some particular custom or law.

"A frequently encountered reaction to the book is the desire to get on to the book of Numbers--which at least has some intriguing narratives such as Moses' sin and punishment, the faint-heartedness of the spies, and Balaam's reversed prophecies" (Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses [New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1990], p. 498).

In other words, if it serves no other purpose, Leviticus makes Numbers seem interesting!

Filed Under: Torah

Standing with our sisters at the Kotel
March 9, 2010

by Shelley Lindauer
Executive Director, Women of Reform Judaism

In this week's Torah portion, Ki Tisa, the Israelites begin to worry that Moses will not return from Mt. Sinai, and in their fear encourage Aaron to create an idol, a molten calf. Aaron said to them "Men, take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me."

According to Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 45, the women heard about the making of the Golden Calf and refused to give their jewelry to their husbands. The women argued that the molten image was an abomination, and they would not participate. God rewards the women with a holiday, Rosh Chodesh, acknowledging their independence, wisdom, and piety. Rabbi Eliezer tells us the women were to observe more new moons in this world than the men, and in the next world they would be renewed like the moon.

Men and women have different responses to stress, and reacted quite differently to the anxiety generated by waiting for Moses to return. While men tend to have a "fight or flight" reaction, women - in the words of psychologist Shelley E. Taylor - approach stressful situations with a "tend and befriend" response. During times of stress women take care of themselves and their children (tending) and form strong group bonds (befriending).

Filed Under: Community | Israel | Torah

D'var Acher: Rest Stop
March 8, 2010

by Daniel Gropper
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Geller reminds us that Torah is best understood when we slow down and pay attention to the small details. Amidst the detailed descriptions found in this double portion, it is easy to overlook the specific gift of the mirrors or any other small linguistic change found in Vayak'heil and P'kudei .

The small detail that catches my eye is the final word of Exodus. "For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Eternal rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys -- b'chol mas'ei'hem " (Exodus 40:38). Notice that the text uses the plural, journeys. Given that the entire wilderness trek took our ancestors from Egypt to the Promised Land, wouldn't it make more sense to say, "throughout their journey?" If I fly to Israel through London, I consider it a single journey, not two separate ones. What is going on here?

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Fairest of Them All?
March 8, 2010

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

This week's double Torah portion, Vayak'heil and P'kudei, is very familiar because much in it repeats what we read several weeks ago. In the earlier portions, God commands Moses to erect a Mishkan, a portable sanctuary, with all the ritual objects furnishing it?the Ark, the menorah, the sinks for the priests to wash before they begin their daily tasks?and then gives detailed instructions about the priestly vestments.

In this week's portion, the Torah tells us that the people did exactly as God commanded Moses. But instead of reporting: "And Moses did as God commanded," the text provides another very detailed description of each of the objects and clothes, repeating with great specificity everything we've already heard. Dr. Carol Meyers labels the earlier instructions "prescriptive Tabernacle texts" because they prescribe what is to be done, while our portions, which describe the implementation of the instructions, are called "descriptive Tabernacle texts" (see The Torah: A Women's Commentary, ed. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L. Weiss [New York: URJ Press, 2008], p. 521). What separates the two accounts is the sin of the Golden Calf.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: The Holiness of Wholeness--And of Brokenness
March 1, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

This week's Torah portion contains one of the most dramatic events in the entire Torah, the incident of the Golden Calf. Moses has been on Mount Sinai for a very long time, too long for those Israelites who still carry Egypt in their hearts to wait. They can't maintain their faith in an invisible God without their leader. So they convince Aaron to build them a Golden Calf.

When God tells Moses what has happened at the foot of the mountain, both Moses and God are angry. Moses is able to sooth God's anger, but when he himself descends from the heights of Mount Sinai and sees with his own eyes that his people are dancing around this idol, he smashes the tablets written by the "finger of God."

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Priests in Peril and Interpreters Ill-at-Ease
February 21, 2010

by Joshua Holo
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

T'tzaveh is a troublesome parashah--not morally so but rather in the sense that one has to go to some trouble to read it. Its painstaking detail begs an interpretation both deeper and broader than the minutia of the parashah itself. Rabbi Geller artfully captures that larger ethical lesson in hiddur mitzvah: while holiness makes claims on our deepest, most hidden selves, it also demands external adornment to match.

A rather darker variation on that same lesson also emerges in the story's margins. T'tzaveh sets the stage for one of Torah's eeriest anecdotes, namely, the violent death of Aaron's sons--a story that is morally and theologically troublesome.

T'tzaveh conspicuously bookends its lengthy descriptions with two specific orders regarding light and fire, applicable not only to Aaron, but also to "his sons . . . Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. . ." (Exodus 28:1-2). First, they must prepare the eternal lamp, to burn "from evening to morning before the Eternal . . . for all time, throughout the ages" (27:21). Second, in closing, God orders an "altar for burning incense" near the lamp, specifically prohibiting "alien incense on it" (30:1, 9).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: For Honor and for Beauty
February 21, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Can I wear a pants suit when I am leading services? How long should my skirts be? Do I have to wear a black suit when I am officiating at a funeral? What should a woman rabbi wear under the chuppah?

Early in my career, when there were so few women rabbis that we all knew each other, questions like these were part of the conversation. I still won't wear a pants suit on the bimah, though most of my women colleagues do. It took me many years before I would even wear pants to work. Part of my hesitation probably has something to do with the era in which I was ordained, when it was still a struggle for women rabbis to be taken seriously by many within our community. But part might also be related to this week's Torah portion, T'tzaveh.

"Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for honor and for beauty [l'chavod ul'tifaret]. Next you shall instruct all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the gift of skill, to make Aaron's vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as a priest. . . . And for Aaron's sons also you shall make tunics, and make sashes for them, and make turbans for them, for honor and for beauty" (Exodus 28:2-3; 28:40).

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Avodah- A Task for All
February 15, 2010

by Richard Klein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Parashat T'rumah details instructions for the fabrication of the Ark, the table, the lamp stand, the Tabernacle and the Ark for Israelite worship in the wilderness.

In her 1961 collection of Studies from the Weekly Sidra (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization Department for Torah Education and Culture), Prof. Nehama Leibowitz reminds us of several rabbinic commentaries that focus on the use of the third person plural verb form, "They shall make" (Exodus 25:10) when detailing the construction of the Ark, while second person singular verbs are applied to all the other items. The Tabernacle, altar, table lamp stand, and other items played significant roles in Israelite worship. They were visible foci for the community. The Ark, empty, would serve a similar function. However, the Ark was to contain the tablets of the law. It was to be more than a structure around which the community gathered. It was to be the spiritual focus of the community.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Building with the Gifts of Our Hearts
February 15, 2010

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

This week's Torah portion is the favorite of rabbis like me who are in the midst of a capital campaign. "The Eternal One spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the Israelite people, and have them take for Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. And these are the gifts that you shall take from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns; fine linen and goat's hair; tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood; oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the incense; lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, stones for the ephod and for the breastpiece. And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them' " (Exodus 25:1-8).

What better text is there to inspire congregants to reflect on the connection between their open hearts and the sacred space in which they pray? What better text is there to help congregants pay attention to the details of the building project: the materials, the colors, even the lighting? And at the same time, what better text is there to remind us all how hard it is to raise the money.

Filed Under: Torah

The Measure of a Person
February 9, 2010 (5 Comments)

by Hallie Mogelson
Member of Bet Shalom Congregation, Minnetonka, MN

February is Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month. We thank Hallie for sharing her D'var Torah from her Bat Mitzvah last month.
We will be featuring blog posts about disability inclusion in Jewish communities. Also visit the RACBlog for posts on this topic.

D'var Torah: Va'era

Shabbat Shalom! Welcome to services at Bet Shalom and my Bat Mitzvah. My Torah portion is Va'era from the book of Exodus.

In this parsha, God reminds Moses of the Covenant he made with his ancestors; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Covenant is that God promises the Jews the land of Canaan, known as Israel today. Adonai is reminded of His Covenant after hearing the cries of the Jews, in cruel bondage. Moses is told, by G-d, to go to Pharaoh and demand freedom for the Jewish slaves. Moses predicts that Pharaoh will not pay attention to him, just as the Israelites had not listened earlier. He makes an appeal to G-d saying, "The Israelites would not listen to me; how then should Pharaoh heed me, me - who gets tongue-tied!"

When I was little, at Shabbat dinner, I remember learning, that Moses had a speech impediment. The first time I read my Torah portion, I realized this is what we had talked about that night. I was amazed that Moses got "tongue-tied"! How could this be? Our most well-known leader couldn't even talk to Pharaoh without stuttering, or being slow of speech? Why did he stutter? Why would G-d choose him to free the Jewish people? Why wouldn't G-d fix his disability?

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Torah

Davar Acher: Finding Shleimut
February 8, 2010

by Adam B. Grossman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Life can be challenging! Daily, no matter our situation or our lifestyle, we deal with a lot of things. There are household duties we have to fulfill, office or school deadlines that have to be met, and, in addition, there are always various other concerns pulling us in countless directions. Even though we try to balance our schedules, something usually gets overlooked. In prioritizing our activities, many of us sacrifice our personal well-being for the sake of others. Sadly, this inattentiveness to our mental and physical needs limits our potential to achieve shleimut, "wholeness" in our lives. And ultimately, it stunts our ability to truly help those around us.

Working to secure shleimut can seem daunting considering how our everyday routines unfold. It requires setting time aside to harness and cultivate intellectual, spiritual, and physical pursuits, even when our schedules might deem it impossible. In commenting on the importance of internal balance, Maimonides, one of Judaism's greatest sages, stated, "A good, sound body, which does not disturb the equilibrium in man, is a divine gift. The well-being of the soul can be obtained only after that of the body has been secured" (see Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, chapters 8, 27).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Coming Down from the Mountain While Still Being There
February 8, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

In January I went on a spirituality retreat. It was an alumni retreat of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality for a group of clergy from around the country who had been part of a two-year program designed to help us deepen our own spiritual commitments. Over the two years, there were four-week-long retreats interspersed with weekly chevrutah study of Chasidic texts. (Chevrutah study, from the root chet-bet-reish, is the intense one-on-one study of a text that one does with a partner.) My chaver ("friend," or in this case, "partner") was a rabbi in Boston. For two years we'd meet weekly on the phone and study a text for about an hour, sharing the insights of the texts as a window into our own lives.

The retreats themselves were intense. There was powerful davening, provocative study, yoga, meditation, and a lot of silence. We ate most of the meals in silence--an eye-opening experience. When you're not talking, you focus more on the food: how it looks on the plate; what it smells like; how it tastes. Whatever food issues you have come up, like: Will there be seconds? Will I get enough? If I'm already full why am I getting up to get more? You notice, and you pay attention.

Filed Under: Torah

The Torah in Haiku: Yitro
February 5, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL
(Originally published in The Torah in Haiku)

Andy Warhol's portrait of Louis Brandeis,
the first Jewish Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States

Jethro tells Moses
You can't be the only judge
It's too exhausting

Delegate the work
Appoint judges for thousands,
Hundreds, fifties, tens

And Moses did this.
The first time a Jewish man
Took in-laws' advice?

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: You Will Not Covet: The Great Reward of Living a Sacred Life
February 1, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Mark. S. Glickman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Our commentary poses an interesting and important question: Numbers one through nine of the Ten Commandments deal with behaviors concerning Shabbat, honoring parents, theft, murder, adultery, and so on. But then we come to number ten, the prohibition against coveting. Unlike its predecessors, this commandment seems to prohibit a thought or a feeling rather than an action. When another person has something that we want, we're not supposed to, well, want it.

"God," we want to say, "You're not being reasonable here. Every day, our brains boil with all kinds of negative thoughts and feelings - the covetous ones, frankly, are far from the worst. And if You think we can control these raging neurons, then evidently, O Creator, You still have a thing or two to learn about us. Plus, isn't it what we do, rather than what we think, that really matters?"

How, we wonder, could it make sense for God to prohibit the unavoidable?

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Be Careful What You Want
February 1, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

I spend a lot of time with preteens, young people about to celebrate their becoming b'nei mitzvah. I marvel at their ability to spend hours looking through all kinds of catalogs, imagining some of the gifts they'd like to get: clothes, jewelry, computer games, and other technological innovations that I can't even imagine, much less use. They want this stuff, they wish they had it, and they hope they'll get it.

Grown-ups want stuff too. We visit the beautifully decorated home of a new friend and wish for a moment that we could live there. Or we sit in a new car and wish it were ours. It's so normal to want things we don't have. And yet, in this week's Torah portion, we return to Mount Sinai and hear again the Ten Utterances.

How powerful it must have been to witness the awesome presence of YHVH, to actually stand at Sinai and hear Aseret HaDib'rot. Our tradition tells us that these Ten Utterances (not commandments, because "I the Eternal am your God" is not exactly a commandment) are the foundation of the moral universe. If we don't uphold them, the world will begin to disintegrate.

Filed Under: Torah

Is God in Haiti?
January 29, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner
Rabbi Kurtz-Lendner is the rabbi of Temple Solel of Hollywood, FL. During Hurricane Katrina he was the rabbi of Northshore Jewish Congregation in Mandeville, LA, just outside of New Orleans. In the following reflection, Rabbi Kurtz-Lendner beautifully weaves together his experience during Hurricane Katrina, the Torah reading from last week ("Bo") and the crisis in Haiti, capturing what so many are feeling in the wake of the devastation.

There are always natural disasters in the world. But sometimes there is such a disaster so devastating that it touches our souls. Our information laden world with instantaneous transmission of human events has immunized us so often to the tragedies that are part of the human condition. But there are events that are so devastating that our desensitization is penetrated and we feel the impact of these events.

And at these times we ask ourselves, Where is God?

The Asian Tsunami was one such event.

Hurricane Katrina affected us because of the devastation of one of our own American cities and so many of us knew people or knew of people who experienced it. And there were those of us who DID experience it.

Filed Under: Jewish Living | Social Action | Torah

Davar Acher: Structure versus Variety
January 24, 2010

by Elizabeth Dunsker
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one kosher food for the rest of your life, what would it be? When I have posed that question to high school students, the most reasoned responses have included veggie pizza, and salmon or tuna sushi, as these meals would provide protein, vegetables, and carbohydrates in each bite. However, even once we consider kashrut, taste, and nutritional requirements, we are still stuck with the question of whether or not we would be content with same food for every meal every day.

As omnivores, we humans can create a healthy diet from all kinds of foods, and our systems work best when we do vary what we eat on a seasonal basis at the very least. But we also crave structure and we often perform better on many levels when there is a strong presence of dependability and predictability in our lives.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Manna from Heaven: What Could Be Better?
January 24, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

"Now when Pharaoh let the people go . . . " (Exodus 13:17) or b'shalach, "sent away" the people, there were no shortcuts. God didn't send the Israelites on the shorter coastal route, by way of the land of the Philistines, concerned that they might change their minds because of fear of war. They had what they needed for the journey: a pillar of cloud to guide them by day and a pillar of fire to give them light for their nighttime travels. Moses even took the bones of Joseph with them, fulfilling the promise their ancestors made. But the people were afraid, so when Pharaoh's armies closed in on them by the Sea of Reeds, they cried out: "Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness?" (14:11).

In one last extraordinary manifestation of God's power, the sea split, the people crossed through safely, and the armies of Pharaoh drowned as the waters covered over them. The Israelites celebrated their deliverance in song and dance, and then continued their journey--and their complaining.

First, the water was too bitter. Then, shortly after, there was grumbling about food: "If only we had died by the hand of the Eternal in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death" (16:3).

Filed Under: Torah

Israel in Haiti: Lending More than a Hand
January 22, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Rabbi David A. Lyon
Congregation Beth Israel, Houston, TX

The aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is still coming into focus. The daily news reports the devastation on the ground. We see the desperate lives of people fending for themselves, rummaging for food and shelter, and seeking medical help. It tears at our hearts and souls. Americans have responded generously with extraordinary amounts of goods and money. Troops, ships and planes are arriving with capable personnel and mass quantities of food, water, and medical supplies. The world has grown accustomed to America's commitment to serve humanity in times of natural disasters. What the world has not always known in times of natural disasters is the remarkable response of the people of Israel.

Surely, you have seen on the news or read in the paper about Israel's unprecedented level of aid to the people of Haiti. As of January 20th, only days after the earthquake, Israel set up field hospitals to serve various levels of medical care. In the very short time they have been in Haiti, it is reported that 367 patients have been cared for in Israel's field hospitals; 104 life-saving operations have been performed; 44 patients are currently hospitalized; and 7 babies have been born in the hospital. The description of the level of sophistication and readiness in the Israeli field hospitals is simply extraordinary.

Filed Under: Israel | Social Action | Torah

Davar Acher: Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are
January 18, 2010

by Michele Lenke
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

I actually want to return to the image of the blood that Rabbi Geller has painted on both the inside and outside of each of our doorposts. She suggests that this blood serves as "a sign for ourselves about who we are meant to be." For me, this speaks to the desire and need for authenticity. When we present ourselves to be one thing to the outside world and another within our homes, we are in one way or another "closeted." When we are closeted, we are not free.

Our narrative in Exodus is crucial to us because it reminds us that we are survivors. We as a people have experienced the emergence from slavery to freedom. We retell this story each and every year. This message of freedom is so important to who we are that we hear its echoes each Shabbat in Kiddush L'Yom Shabbat as we sing "zeicher litziyat Mitzrayim," recalling the Exodus from Egypt, and not allowing us to forget.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: And Now a Word From Your Sponsers
January 18, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

This week's Torah portion, Bo, is the middle of the Exodus story. God has already sent Moses to demand of Pharaoh: "Let my people go" (Exodus 5:1, 7:16, 7:26, 8:16, 9:1, 9:13). Following Pharaoh's refusals, there have been seven plagues already. Early in our portion, God once again instructs Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him to "Let my people go" (10:3). This time the plague is locusts, so devastating that nothing growing remains in Egypt (10:12-15). Even this is not enough, so God sends darkness, darkness so thick, that you couldn't see your neighbor (10:21-23).

Pharaoh is almost willing now, but again he changes his mind. So God tells Moses that there will be one more plague, this one so terrible that "there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again" (11:6).

Then suddenly, right at this climactic moment there is an interruption. Chapter 12 begins "The Eternal One said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 'This month shall mark for you the beginning of months.' " God proceeds to give instructions about the Passover offering: each Israelite shall keep watch over a lamb for the offering until the fourteenth day of the month, slaughter it at twilight, take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts and the lintel of the houses, and eat the roasted sacrifice that same night. The text continues: "That night I will go through the land of Egypt . . . when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you . . . "(12:12-13). Some verses later we read: "You shall observe this as an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants. . . . And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this rite?' you shall say, 'It is the passover sacrifice to the Eternal, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when smiting the Egyptians, but saved our houses' " (12:24-27).

Filed Under: Torah

The Torah in Haiku: Remembering Miep Gies
January 13, 2010

by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL
(Originally published in The Torah in Haiku)

A Righteous Gentile
Miep Gies helped to hide Anne Frank
May she rest in peace

As reported by the Washington Post:

Miep Gies, the last survivor of those who risked death to hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, died Jan. 11 in the Netherlands. Ms. Gies had suffered a fall on Christmas, and her Web site said she died after a brief illness. She was 100. ... Gies was born into a working-class family in Vienna in 1909. As a child, her name was Hermine Santruschitz. During the first World War, food was scarce, and it was later feared that she might die. At the age of 11, a Dutch workers' union helped bring her to the Netherlands to restore her health, and she made her home there.(See full article)

Gies was honored by Yad Vashem as one of the "Righteous Among The Nations". Although many consider her a hero, she said, "I am not a hero but did what seemed necessary at the time." You can learn more at the Miep Gies website.

Filed Under: Jewish History | Torah

Galilee Diary: Torah for the masses
January 12, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)

Ben Bag-Bag says: Turn [the Torah] over and turn it over, for everything is in it. -Mishnah, Avot 5:22

I just returned from Limmud Galil, where I had the misfortune to be teaching a class in the first period of the morning (8:00) on the second day of the event, after the participants had all stayed up singing until 2:00 am. And my class was in the same slot as several big name speakers - and a Pilates workshop. So it was intimate.

Limmud ("learning") got its start in England 25 years ago, and has since spread all over the world. The idea is to make Torah study accessible to the masses by creating a sort of festival that brings together learners and teachers of every background and interest for a brief, intensive experience of learning and socializing and crossing ideological and institutional boundaries. The idea is that everyone volunteers - to teach, to organize, so it really becomes a learning community. The "costs" are that there is a certain amount of chaos (my class was small; a few years ago a friend had no learners at all at her session; it's nice to let people learn what they want when they want, but to volunteer to teach, spend time preparing and end up not teaching is rather annoying); and that the quality of instruction can be uneven. And by definition, just about anything goes (a woman stuck her head in the door of my class on halachic controversies, to ask where the class on spirit communication was taking place).

Filed Under: Israel | Torah

Davar Acher: What's in a Name?
January 11, 2010

by Aliza Gazek
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

As I walked up to my freshman dorm this September, carrying a metal-frame backpack and sap-infested clothes from my wilderness orientation program, I heard people shout, "ALIZA!" The welcome cheer that followed my name is but a blur, overshadowed by my amazement that these people--whom I later learned are my resident advisors--knew my name and pronounced it correctly even though we had yet to meet.

"I'm a-LEE-za, like an alligator," I say as I press my palms together in front of me and make snaking motions as I expect an alligator would. I then rehearse in my head the names of all the others--and their animals--who've been introduced so far, while also trying to pay attention to the person after me. How many names will I remember? Who will remember my name at the song session tonight or at breakfast tomorrow morning?

Name games are prevalent at North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY) events, and remembering someone's name is a sure way to score points toward a potential friendship. When teens arrive, they're each handed a name tag and expected to keep it plastered to their body for the duration of the weekend. Sometimes, there are even consequences for forgetting to wear the name tag, like having to sing and act out "I'm a Little Teapot" for everyone's viewing pleasure.

Filed Under: College Life | Torah | Youth and Family Life

D'var Torah: How Does God Appear to You?
January 11, 2010 (5 Comments)

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

It happened again this week--this time at the gym. Just as I was finishing my workout, someone called to me:
"You're Rabbi Geller, right?"
"Right."
"You know what, rabbi? I don't believe in God."

It is hard to know how to respond when that happens. Usually I mumble about giving me a call to discuss it. Other times, when I have more time, I ask the person to describe the "god" he or she doesn't believe in.

Nine times out of ten it is the god that the person first met as a child, the one who looks like an old man with a beard who lives somewhere in the sky and knows if you've been bad or good. The person is usually surprised when I say: "You know, I don't believe in that 'god' either."

Filed Under: Torah

The Torah in Haiku: Shemot
January 8, 2010

Shifra-Puah by Ed Nickow
Temple Chai, Long Grove, IL
(Originally published in The Torah in Haiku)

Now a new Pharaoh
Who did not know of Joseph
Came to rule Egypt

He told the midwives
"There are too many Jews here,
Kill their newborn boys"

Shifra and Puah
Feared G-d and defied Pharaoh
So the Jews survived

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: Earning Your Real Name
January 4, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Richard J. Birnholz
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Geller writes that each of us has three names: a name given at birth, one by which we are called, and one that we discover when we connect God's name to our lives.

I would suggest a fourth name, our Hebrew name. More than a label and a mark of religious identity, a Hebrew name has the power to challenge and transform us. Jewish parents can give their children Hebrew names. But adult Jews must decide if their Hebrew names are to be a blessing or a burden.

American poet, singer, and songwriter Shel Silverstein wrote about a burdensome name in a song made famous by Johnny Cash called, "A Boy Named Sue."* In it, a boy does not blame his father for abandoning the family, but hates him for naming him "Sue." After a lifetime of fighting to prove his manhood, the boy searches for his dad, intent on killing him for the pain he has caused. When they finally meet and each turns to fire his gun, the father hesitates and explains the method behind his madness:

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Discovering Your Real Name
January 4, 2010

by Laura Geller
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Our tradition teaches that each of us has three names: the one we are given at birth, the one we are called, and our real name. The task of each person, according to the tradition, is to discover our real name.

This week we begin a new book of the Hebrew Bible, Sh'mot (Exodus). It takes its name from the important word in the first sentence. The Rabbis tell us that the name of the parashah--and in this case, the whole book--is not just an accident of the first sentence. Instead, the name captures the essence of the book.

"These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob . . . Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah . . . " (Exodus 1:1)--the list goes on. "The total number of persons that were of Jacob's issue came to seventy . . . Joseph died, and all his brothers and that generation . . ." (1:5-6).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: A Story of Hope
December 28, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Without giving anything away, I can say publicly that Dan Brown's long-awaited sequel to The Da Vinci Code, which is called The Lost Symbol (New York, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009), ends with a nechamta, a "note of comfort." Despite the trials and betrayals it depicts, the book gives the reader a sense of hope and possibility upon completion. A similar feeling awaits us at the end of the Book of Genesis.

In Genesis, we witness a powerful drama. Among its key points of tension is sibling rivalry. Beginning with Cain and Abel, brothers in Genesis do not have outstanding relationships. Cain murders Abel. Ishmael is banished soon after Isaac is born. Jacob flees Esau, who seeks to murder him for tricking their father into giving Jacob his heartfelt blessing. Jacob's sons sell their brother Joseph to a caravan of Ishmaelites. A note of contention is heard throughout the book.

Filed Under: Torah

Davar Acher: We Are What We Remember . . . A Daily Practice of Mindfulness
December 20, 2009 (2 Comments)

by Andrew Klein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

I've been privileged to hear Rabbi Michael Marmur, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, speak on a number of occasions. Marmur offers a powerful tool to help us practice mindful thinking: he suggests that we can approach each moment of our lives with either an attitude of "Oy!" or of "Wow!"

Oy! I have to go to the gym today!

or. . .

Wow! I get to go the gym today and take care of this healthy body that God has given me.

Marmur suggests that we look at the world through the eyes of Abraham Joshua Heschel--with a sense of radical amazement, with a feeling of Wow!, and with an appreciation for the miracles around us all the time (see Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997]).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: We Are What We Remember
December 20, 2009

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

One of our Reform liturgy's (and Rabbi Jack Riemer's) most beautiful poems begins with the words, "In the rising of the sun and in its going down, we remember them. In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember them." Continuing, we read "When we have joys we yearn to share, we remember them. When we have decisions that our difficult to make, we remember them" (Gates of Repentence: The New Union Prayerbook for the Days of Awe, Chaim Stern, ed. [New York: Central Conference of America Rabbis, 1978, rev. 1996], pp. 490-491). Part of the power of this poem comes, I think, from its evoking of memory. Whenever a loved one dies, our hearts and minds fill with memories.

Yet, relationships with those to whom we are close are often complicated and shaped by a variety of experiences. When I meet with children whose parents have died, they often tell me of periods of time when they were not in close contact with their mom or dad. "We had our issues for a few years," they say. In most cases, there was some form of reconciliation and understanding, and the children are grateful for it. Yet, while we do not forget those years of difficulty, when a loved one dies, we try to remember what we loved about them. We try to see their lives from what Spinoza called subspecies aeterni, from the perspective of eternity. We try to remember the beautiful moments that imbued a relationship with empathy and love. Riemer's poem helps us do so. It guides and affirms our power to choose what we remember, and it frames those memories in a positive and affirming way.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Resolving to Stop Rationalizing
December 14, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

As we approach the secular New Year, we may be contemplating resolutions and ways of acting differently in the coming year. Judging from anecdotes from family and friends, I would say that gym memberships climb rapidly in January and February, only to diminish over the following months. Part of the reason for this phenomenon, I think, is that we human beings have an extraordinary capacity to rationalize what we do: We decide not to support a charitable campaign because other, wealthier people will do so. We choose not to study Torah because we have so many other pressing obligations. We neglect going to the gym because we are too busy. We want to make amends with a sibling, yet we justify not doing so by pointing out that he or she should have called and apologized. A grain of truth can often be found in our rationalizations. Yet, when we look closely at ourselves, we know we can do better.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: Deception Yet Again
December 6, 2009

by Amy Schwartzman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

In his commentary, Rabbi Moffic uncovers the multilayer message found in the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. What appears to be a simple story about a woman's desire for a man turns out to be a lesson in deception, sex, and power.

Of course, this is not the first time we are presented with these themes. Our ancestors seem to be regularly engaged in events that include the use of trickery, the crossing of intimate boundaries, and the desire for authority and control.

Just moments before Joseph's encounter with these themes, we read about his brother Judah engaging in a similar affair. After the death of his first two sons, both of whom had been married to Tamar, Judah is reluctant to allow his third son to marry Tamar. Tamar senses that Judah will never follow through with the betrothal (a Levirate obligation), despite the fact that she is entitled to a family by Judah's lineage.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Hidden in Plain Sight
December 6, 2009 (3 Comments)

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Several of our commentaries have focused on the power of words. In the Torah, words are a means of creation and revelation; of producing the world, as in Genesis 1-3; and of revealing truths about humanity. Occasionally, a word that recurs in a narrative can hint at an underlying lesson that does not seem obvious in the story itself. We have a beautiful example in this week's Torah reading.

It is found in the incident between Joseph and the wife of his master Potiphar. A courtier to Pharaoh, Potiphar made Joseph his chief steward. Potiphar's wife--whom the text does not name--was attracted to Joseph and tried to seduce him. When he refused, she succeeded in grabbing an article of his clothing that she presented to her husband as proof that Joseph sought to seduce her. Joseph was thrown in prison (39:11-20).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: Who Was that Masked Man?
November 29, 2009

by Ari J. Goldstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

If you think that old episodes of The Lone Ranger were dramatic, they were nothing compared with the evening leading up to Jacob's meeting with Esau after twenty years of hiding in exile. The confrontation with Esau was inevitable; the outcome, however, was still in question. Until now, Jacob had been seen by his brother as weak and devious. He had taken advantage of a famished brother to acquire the birthright and deceived a disabled father to receive the family blessing. In neither of these two episodes were his actions courageous, strong, or admirable.

And while Jacob changed in profound ways as he entered adulthood--from the weakling of his youth to the resilient and tough man who would amass wealth and family--one thing eluded him. In order to take his place in our patriarchal lineage, he would need to change the mind of the one man who still saw him as scrawny and pathetic--Esau.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Brandeis and Jacob: Struggle and Change
November 29, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

In the 1940s, when a group of philanthropists sought to find a name for the American Jewish university they were opening outside of Boston, several ideas were debated. Some wanted to name the school after Albert Einstein. Others sought to honor a figure who had a recently passed away and was widely considered the most accomplished American Jew of the first half of the twentieth century. That figure was Louis Brandeis.

Brandeis was not a conventional American Jew. He was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, in an assimilated family that had roots in the mystical Frankist movement of nineteenth-century Prague. Scholars speculate on the influence of his Frankist heritage on his later adoption of Zionism. Yet Brandeis had very little exposure to Judaism for the first half of his life. He married a cousin in a ceremony presided over by another relative, Felix Adler, the leader of the Ethical Culture movement. (For a comprehensive look at Brandeis's life, see the recently published book by Melvin Urofsky, Louis Brandeis: A Life [New York: Pantheon, 2009.)

Filed Under: Jewish History | Torah

D'var Acher: Which Jacob Will We Be?
November 23, 2009 (2 Comments)

by Robert H. Lowey
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

I appreciate Rabbi Moffic's conclusion but the midrash he cites bothers me.

The angels' ascending and descending Jacob's ladder is rich for positive interpretation: Rashi speaks of angels who accompany us within Israel and others beyond its borders, offering protection wherever we go (Rashi on Genesis 28:12). Joseph Hertz mentions "every spot on earth may be for man the gate of heaven,"1 indicating God's omnipresence. Nahum Sarna suggests "angelic activity may symbolize Jacob's prayers for protection, which rise to heaven and receive a response"2, teaching us of the power of prayer.

My problem with the message discussed by Nehama Leibowitz3 from Midrash Tanchuma is its triumphalism as if: other nations rise and fall, but the Jewish "Energizer Bunny" keeps on going. We do not need to minimize other nations, cultures, and peoples in order to build ourselves up. It is not as though the Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans have disappeared. Their history did not cease when empires fell any more than Jewish history ends with the destruction of the Temple.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Not by Might, Not by Power
November 23, 2009

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The widely-heralded book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy, ([New York, Random House, Inc.) was published in 1987. Kennedy's thesis is that a superpower emerges, grows, plateaus, and eventually declines, replaced by a new nation. He cites the rise and fall of Great Britain, envisions the relative plateauing of the United States, and predicts the eventual rise of China. Kennedy is a historian, and while his book focuses on the modern period, he does look back at ancient China and the Near East. He argues that the rise and fall of great nations is part of the pattern of human history.

Almost 2000 years before Kennedy, our Sages made the same observation. They based their thoughts on a reading of a verse from this week's Torah portion that describes Jacob's vision of a ladder stretching between heaven and earth. As we read in Genesis 28:12, "He dreamed, and lo--a stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching to heaven, and lo--angels of God going up and coming down on it."

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: What We Want to Hear
November 16, 2009

by Eric Polokoff
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Two girls from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania were nervously riding a New York City subway. They relaxed when seeing a familiar sight. Upon spotting a Chasid one whispered to the other, "'Look! A Lincoln impersonator!'" (The New York Times, "Metropolitan Diary," October 12, 2009).

It's easy to make mistakes. Sometimes we see what we want to see--or hear what we want to hear.

His eyesight failing, Isaac was unsure whether the son he was about to bless was his beloved Esau or Jacob. Isaac lamented: "'The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau!'" (Genesis 27:22). He dismissed what he actually heard and misled himself. Rebekah, Isaac's wife, likewise misconstrued things. Previously God had informed her "'the elder [Esau] shall serve the younger [Jacob].'" (25:23). Having overheard Isaac readying to offer Esau his innermost blessing (27:4), Rebekah wrongly feared that God's prophecy would be subverted. Enlisting Jacob's support in a scheme to present him as Esau, Rebekah tellingly mischaracterized Isaac's proposed blessing to his brother as God's (27:7).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Hearing is Believing
November 16, 2009 (2 Comments)

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The Torah has a way of conveying great drama in concise language. As a work of literature, it also incorporates some of the most sophisticated techniques of foreshadowing and thematic coherence. We see a masterful illustration of this literary virtuosity in the opening section of this week's Torah portion.

Genesis 25:19 opens by telling us that we will learn of the descendants of Isaac―namely, Jacob and Esau, his twin sons. The first instance of foreshadowing appears in the very next verse. Rebecca, we read, is "the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-Aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean" (25:20). This web of relationships becomes important a few chapters later when Rebecca urges Jacob to flee to her brother Laban to escape Esau (27:42-45).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: Sarah's Legacy
November 9, 2009 (2 Comments)

by Boaz D. Heilman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

"Sarah lived to be 127 years old--such was the span of Sarah's life. Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan . . . " (Genesis 23:1-2).

On one of our family visits to my father's grave in Israel, my mother remarked on how she always gets so worked up before coming to the cemetery. "And then, once I get there, all I find is a stone."

Sarah lived, Sarah died. End of story. No last words, no blessings, no eternal message. Or so it seems.

All Sarah's previous words (aside from one tent-side laugh) were of denial and of impassioned anger and righteousness--against Abraham, against Hagar, against Yishmael. Of course she was right in all these cases. But is that enough for a matriarch?

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Keeping Our Cool: What Sarah Can Teach Us
November 9, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

President Obama is known for his even temperament. Whether in speeches, interviews, or press conferences, he has a calmness and deliberateness in speaking and acting. In Hebrew we might call this temperament hishtavut hanefesh, "equanimity, inner calmness, maintenance of an even keel." The origins of this quality remain elusive. One could point to genes, faith, life experience, and so on. Yet for our Sages, it was a desirable quality, and one that they equated with faith. We see an example of this way of thinking in a beautiful commentary on the opening verse of Parashah Chayei Sarah.

Filed Under: Torah

Honoring an Inspirational Scholar and Educator: Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
November 6, 2009

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, noted Torah scholar, author, and speaker, was awarded a Maurice N. Eisendrath Bearer of Light Award -- the highest honor bestowed by the Reform Movement.

For the past 25 years, Dr. Zornberg has taught Torah in Jerusalem at Matan, Pardes and the Jerusalem College for Adults and travels widely, lecturing in Jewish, academic and psychoanalytic settings. The author of multiple publications and three books, her most recent is The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious.

Watch this video of the award presentation, and heartfelt the testimonies of Reform rabbis who have been influenced and inspired by her work.

Filed Under: Torah

The Jewish Teenage Online Universe
November 4, 2009 (6 Comments)

Rabbi Laura Novak WIner is a Youth Specialist with the Union for Reform Judaism.

What do the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Yellow Pages have in common? They are both resources that young people today have probably rarely seen or rarely if ever utilize. Print resources like this, as those of us of older generations know, are obsolete almost immediately after going to print. Wikipedia, Google and Craigslist have taken their place.

Thankfully, Torah is not like the Yellow Pages! Torah is eternal. Its messages and lessons are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. As Reform Jews, we keep those lessons relevant through our ongoing process of study, interpretation, and midrash-making.

During the Symposium on Jewish Identity's program on technology today, Dr. David Bryfman enlightened us to this dynamic in the Jewish teenage online universe. If one digs deep into the web, one can find teens actively engaged in creating their own texts, their own interpretations of the weekly parshiot (Torah portions). Their creativity, their desire to find complexity and nuance in Judaism, their ongoing questioning, as well as their deep care and concern about being Jewish are all translated into online Jewish engagement in study and interpretation of Torah.

Great news, right!? Of course it is. Teens studying Torah - what can be bad about that? Bryfman poses challenging questions for us. What are the implications of this for the way in which we engage youth in our synagogues, our institutions, our movement? How might we need to think differently about Jewish teens? How must we think differently about how we engage those teens? How can we do all that and still be authentic?

I continued to ponder these questions as we concluded a full day of learning. I look forward to tomorrow's continuation of the conversation.

Filed Under: Community | Torah | Youth and Family Life

D'var Acher: Bringing Heaven Down to Earth
November 2, 2009

by Deborah Niederman, R.J.E.
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Moffic suggests that our human actions, as exemplified by Abraham and Sarah's modeling of "welcoming guests," hachnasat orchim, can "bring heaven down to earth." He suggests that the ethical way Abraham and Sarah approach this mitzvah imbues it with special meaning, and quoting Rabbi Soloveitchik, reminds us that God does not have separate standards for our ritual and ethical acts.

Many of the rich stories that follow in this very same parashah challenge the ethical nature of humanity and God's hopes for God's Chosen People. "For I have selected him [Abraham], so that he may teach his children and those who come after him to keep the way of the Eternal, doing what is right and just. . . ," (Genesis18:19). And what does it mean to keep the way of the Eternal? It means to act in an ethical manner to do what is right and just. And so, in pleading with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah in the very next story in this parashah, Abraham takes an ethical stance and questions God's own justice: "Must not the Judge of all the earth do justly?" (Genesis 18:25). Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut tells us Abraham's pleading fails, "not because his moral stance is faulty but because his premise is wrong: There are not enough righteous people in the cities who could make a difference" (The Torah: A Modern Commentary, rev. ed. [New York: URJ Press, 2005] p. 121). We are reminded that it takes the impact of a courageous band to bring about change and that if there are not enough righteous people, they will perish with their neighbors as do all the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Ethics versus Ritual
November 2, 2009

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

One of the great modern teachers of Judaism, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, zichrono livrachah, urged Reform Jews to ritualize the ethical and ethicize the ritual. Rabbi Wolf's point was that Jewish tradition does not differentiate between ethical and ritual law. (See essay "Back to the Future: On Rediscovering the Commandments," in Duties of the Soul, eds. Knobel and Goldstein [New York: UAHC Press], 1999, p. 20). They are deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing. This argument has its detractors, and it surely does not characterize the views of the founders of Reform Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany and America, who saw ritual practices as the husk surrounding the Jewish kernel of ethical monotheism. Yet, for Reform Jews exploring traditional practices and developing new ones, the notion of creating rituals that convey an ethical message is an appealing one. We see this trend, for example, in the blessing for pursuing justice produced by the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism (see www.rac.org/pubs/saresources/cards) and the creation of new liturgies that address issues of discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

Filed Under: Torah

Lech Lecha - Ur-Text for Zionism
November 1, 2009

by Larry Kaufman

The first time I spoke on Zionism from a synagogue bimah happened to be on Shabbat Lech Lecha, and I had been taught to relate any talk from the bimah on Shabbat to parashat hashavuah. In finding my connection, I also had what I naively thought was an original insight - Shabbat Lech Lecha should be observed everywhere as Zionist Shabbat. Here "the land that I shall show thee" is first promised as the home of what is to become a great nation. I later learned that the American Zionist Movement was ahead of me on that concept (and in fact, AZM now promotes November, when Lech Lecha is generally read, as Zionist Month).

After fifty years in Jewish organizational life, I am cynical enough to wonder whether Lech Lecha was chosen for Zionist Shabbat because of its content, or because it came at just the right time to focus attention on Israel and Zionism, right after the holidays and early in the organizational year. And are the Zionist messages that I now extract from the text actually there, or am I just stretching to read them in?

Filed Under: Israel | Torah

D'var Acher: As We Walk on the Way
October 26, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Peter W Stein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Moffic presents a beautiful characterization of our people, noting that we are "restless people, eternal walkers on a journey to the Promised Land." Later in his essay, he describes our life within the covenant but says: "It is not simply following halachah,the Jewish legal code."

I believe that the halachah is the greatest evidence of our restlessness. The very word itself tells us that our legal teachings are not cut and dry, never-changing precepts. Halachah derives from the Hebrew root hei-lamed-chaf, meaning "walking" or "moving," and it has changed with each generation and each place where our people has lived.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Promises to Keep
October 26, 2009

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Robert Frost ends his magnificent poem, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," with the words, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep." Frost's poem speaks to inherent sense of restlessness. We are always looking around the next corner. Our lives reflect the motto of the Canadian Bureau of Tourism: "keep exploring."

Our ancestor Abraham may have felt the same way. His life began in Mesopotamia and included sojourns across the ancient Near East. In fact, the first words God says to Abraham call upon him to begin a journey. " 'Get you from your land, your birthplace, your father's house, to the land that I will show you,' " (Genesis 12:1). Numerous interpretations of these words fill our commentaries. One extraordinary one is offered by the S'fat Emet. " 'Get you from your land,' " he says, is an eternal command, instructing each of us to "always keep walking." "'To the land that I will show you' " is, according to the S'fat Emet, not only a particular destination, but also "always some new attainment." We are constantly moving toward something new. That's why, he says, "the human being is called a walker. Whoever stands still is not renewed, for nature holds him fast. The angels are above nature . . . but the person has to keep walking" (see Arthur Green, ed., The Language of Truth: Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, [Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1998] pp. 22-23).

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: Even a Common Language and the Same Words Can Be a Barrier
October 19, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Aaron M. Petuchowski
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

How distressing it must have been when God confused the speech of those engaged in building the Tower of Babel! The common language of our early biblical generation, as Rabbi Evan Moffic eloquently points out, was a threat not to God, per se, but to the self-perception of those who wanted to build. The dispersion of humanity all over the earth eliminated the immediate concern.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: The Many Languages of Religion
October 19, 2009

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Parashat Noach is filled with intense drama. We witness the flood, the survival of Noah and his family, and God's promise to never again destroy humanity. Tucked into the end of the parashah is another seminal event: the attempted construction of the Tower of Babel. "All the earth had the same language and the same words," (Genesis 11:1) we are told, and they gathered in the land of Shinar and said, "Come, let us build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over all the earth!" (11:4). This building project is made possible by the discovery of the process for making bricks by drying clay. It also piques God's interest and concern. To disrupt their plans, God decides to confound their language. As we read, "'Let us go down there and confuse their speech, so that no one understands what the other is saying.' So it came about that the Eternal scattered them over all the earth, and they stopped building the city" (11:7-9).

Filed Under: Torah

In the Beginning...
October 12, 2009

by Larry Kaufman

As an inveterate - my wife would say obsessive - participant in on-line discussions, list-servs, Facebook, and blogs, I was interested to learn in a recent thread on iWorship that not all Reform congregations follow the Torah reading protocol for Rosh Hashanah set forth in Gates of Repentance (Chapter 22 of Genesis, the binding of Isaac, in Service 1, and Chapter 1, the creation story, in Service 2). Some congregations that observe only one day choose the creation story for that day, and some that observe two days go along with their Orthodox and Conservative neighbors, and read Genesis Chapter 21, dealing with the birth of Isaac and the expulsion of Ishmael, on the first day, reserving Chapter 22, the Akedah, for the second day.

My frequent admonition on the URJ list-servs is that it's not enough for contributors to tell us what their congregations do, we need to know why. One diligent list member explained that his congregation reads Chapters 21 and 22 on the two days, because, were they to read Genesis Chapter 1 on the second day , they would soon suffer B'reishit fatigue, from reading it so soon again on Simchat Torah, and then a week later on Shabbat B'reishit.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: Ideas of Creation
October 12, 2009 (3 Comments)

by Lawrence A. Hoffman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Moffic discusses the power of words in creation. Did the biblical author who wrote this account of creation think he was telling a truth? Was this how he thought it really happened? Or was he writing an idea? They are not the same.

The universe is made however it is made. It just "is." We do our best trying to say things about it. "Roses are red and violets are blue," for example. So far, so good. That is a simple proposition. It is either true or it is false. If true, it is a fact, but except for some very imaginative artists, it is probably not an idea that takes us anywhere.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: The Creative Power of Words
October 11, 2009

by Evan Moffic
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

"Sticks and stones," the nursery rhyme says, "may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." The intent of this pithy statement is probably to help children solve disputes with words rather than physical violence. Its message does, however, raise serious doubts. Words can and do hurt us. Words can trivialize, words can insult, words can stereotype. Words can, even when we do not intend them to do so, convey dangerous messages. A pertinent Jewish example is the use of the phrase "Old Testament" in reference to the Hebrew Bible. When we use that phrase, we (perhaps unwittingly) support the view that our Torah and other sacred texts are at best incomplete, having been superseded by a "New Testament."

Words can hurt us because they contain enormous power. For the same reason, they can also inspire, uplift, and enlighten us. They can even create something out of nothing. We see this idea illustrated strikingly in the opening chapters of Torah. How does God create the universe? Through words. "God said, 'Let there be light'--and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). This pattern of God speaking and creation coming into being continues. The sky, the waters, the earth literally come into being through God's words.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: It's Not Just about You
October 4, 2009

by Michele Brand Medwin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

As we come to the end of Deuteronomy, we are once again confronted with an event in the Torah that is so hard to accept. God speaks to Moses as he overlooks the Land of Israel and reminds him, "I have let you see it [the land] with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there" (Deuteronomy 34:4). Moses, who did so much for the Israelite people, who led them out of Egypt, who brought them the Ten Commandments, who put up with their incessant complaining in the wilderness, who the Torah says no other prophet is like, is prohibited from going into the Promised Land.

Sometimes the most difficult Torah verses are the ones that can give us the greatest insight. I teach classes on spirituality trying to help people find a way to connect to God. When I talk about ways to enrich one's life and become a better person through a connection to God, there is always someone who reminds me that they can do all of this without having to believe in God. To me, believing in God, no matter how you envision God, is important because it reminds you that there is something greater than you, that life is not just about you. There is something beyond what you think is right or wrong. It helps to put your life in context as being part of a greater whole.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: Moses's Death, God's Breath
October 4, 2009

by Oren J. Hayon
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses," Poems, vol. 2, 1842)

* * *

Before the birth of virtually every significant male character in the Bible, extraordinary tales are told about how he was brought into being. But in Moses's case, the miracle stories are told not about his birth but about his death. The biblical scene recounting Moses's death is remarkable not only in its dramatic potency, but also because it delivers comfort and blessing along with its cargo of sorrow.

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Acher: The Sukkah Still Stands
September 28, 2009

by James H. Perman
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

The Festival of Sukkot is underrated. It suffers from its placement in the calendar. It feels burdensome to have such an important festival so soon after the High Holy Days. It is so beautiful, yet it seems redundant, anticlimactic.

Some believe that it was the Festival of Sukkot that inspired the Puritans of Massachusetts to celebrate their Thanksgiving Day. While giving thanks is a fitting conclusion to a succession of sacred days, Sukkot is more than just a biblical "Thanksgiving."

Rabbi Hayon reminds us of the seasoned wisdom of Ecclesiastes. The book tells us about the changing nature of life. We are reminded that our condition is always precarious. We see the link between our insecurity and the sukkah.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

D'var Torah: Making Homelessness Our Home
September 28, 2009

by Oren J. Hayon
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Like a giant tent spread atop three tall pillars that support it and give it shape, the Jewish year is held up by the Shalosh R'galim, the "three pilgrimage festivals." Pesach commemorates the joy of liberation and freedom, Shavuot acknowledges the power of God's word revealed in Torah, and Sukkot reminds Israel of nights spent in fragile huts during its wilderness sojourn.

Pesach and Shavuot celebrate spiritual fulfillment, times when God anticipated Israel's needs and acted bountifully and graciously to fulfill them. We were granted political and national fulfillment on Pesach, when we were led out of the painful grip of slavery. Atop Sinai, we were given the wisdom of Torah, and we celebrate its spiritual and intellectual fulfillment on Shavuot. But Sukkot, in contrast, does not celebrate substantive fulfillment at all. Instead, it acknowledges the insecurity and uncertainty of desert nights spent in frail temporary shelters.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

D'var Acher: Living and Learning in Relationship to God and Others
September 21, 2009

by Steven L. Mills
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Hayon observes in his d'var Torah, "Our parashah reminds us that all redemption stems from relationship." I remember a time nearly twelve years ago when my son was five; he made a poor behavioral decision and I chose to engage him in a role-play scenario to see if he could comprehend what he had done wrong. I really did not know if he understood the lessons in behavior that I was sharing with him, but the next day he wanted to talk some more about our role play.

This time he took on the role of the parent and I became the son. It amazed me how much he had absorbed from our earlier discussion. At one point he said, "Okay, now let's pretend that I am a daddy chicken and you are the son chicken." I said, "Fine." So he gave me his best "stern daddy chicken look" and said quite innocently, "I didn't like how you acted, boy chick." I managed not to laugh at that moment and I never forgot the lesson I learned from my "boychik."

Filed Under: Torah

D'var Torah: There Are No Good Old Days
September 21, 2009

by Oren J. Hayon
(Originally publised in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

We have arrived finally at Parashat Haazinu, the last speech Moses will make to his people and the penultimate installment of his conversation with us from miles and centuries away. When we resume the plot of Deuteronomy on Simchat Torah (after next week's special festival reading for Sukkot), Moses's poetry will be little more than a thin wisp of air, propelling us backward to Genesis 1 and the beginnings of the cosmos.

We are preparing, then, to experience firsthand the strange paradox of Jewish time; moving forward from this parashah, the flow of time splits in two. After the end of Deuteronomy, the Israelites enter their Promised Land--but we, the readers, return home to Genesis.

Filed Under: Torah

On Abraham and Isaac
September 15, 2009 (1 Comment)

by Steven Evans

The story of Abraham and Isaac is said by rabbis to present to them one of their greatest challenges, particularly for Rosh Hashanah. No doubt this is true. However it need not be so. There are a number of important principles which help explain the story and its import.

First it is useful to recall that just before Abraham is to be "tested" by God, Abraham is told by God, "...it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you ..." [Genesis 21:12]. Clearly God has made it plain to Abraham that Isaac will bring forth the future progeny of Abraham. It should be clear then that Abraham knows at the deepest level directly from God [not even an Angel of God] that Isaac will not perish, for God has stated it clearly to him, just before his fateful trip with Isaac to Mt. Moriah.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

D'var Acher: The Akeidah: Can We Really Sacrifice What is Not Ours?
September 14, 2009 (7 Comments)

by Mark Covitz
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Rabbi Hayon gives us the insightful interpretation that Abraham is willing to sacrifice his future as a means of turning to God and of continuing his own personal growth. And while Abraham does grow from this experience, in truth, it is not his future he is willing to sacrifice but that of his son Isaac. It is instructive that Abraham argues for the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah but not for his own son, just as we have the occasional tendency to treat complete strangers better than our own loved ones. In the passages we read, it is God who stops the action before it becomes a slaughter; and it is God, not Abraham, who points out that Isaac is Abraham's "beloved one."

The Akeidah is a statement not only on what we may be willing to do with our own lives for a higher purpose, but also on what we are not authorized to do with someone else's life. Perhaps child sacrifice was a cultural norm, even playing a role in early Israelite society; but we can see this episode as a mandate on the Deity's part that such action is unacceptable. And we can relate this to Rosh HaShanah by letting it serve as a reminder that all we can control is our own behavior and our own lives; and even those are not entirely within our control. If during these Days of Awe we recognize our struggle to control ourselves, how can we possibly control others? We must accept the limited extent of our abilities to determine the future for those we love.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

D'var Torah: Father of Multitudes
September 14, 2009

by Oren J. Hayon
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

One principle that remains reliably true throughout the Bible is that the fruitful production of children is evidence of God's love and providence for favored and faithful humans. The birth of healthy children--especially to mothers and fathers who had despaired of their fertility or potency--is proof positive of God's attention and care. The child's arrival shows his parents that God desires to grant them a future, lengthening their legacy and their name long into the future.

Certainly, the conception and birth of our forefather Isaac is a prime example of this phenomenon; the annunciation of his birth to his withered and barren parents Abraham and Sarah is so preposterous that it evokes more laughter than gratitude. Nevertheless, the miracle baby is born, weaned, and raised, and we share his parents' delight that through Isaac the line of Abraham and Sarah will be perpetuated, giving life to the entire future of the Jewish people.

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah