Reparations: Seeding a Better Future
The Past is Hard to Leave Behind
During the pandemic, many of us have turned to our comfort foods as we self-isolate.
Technology and Our Covetous Inclinations
During a recent Zoom meeting, a participant remarked that she dreaded video calls, lamenting, “Seeing everyone else’s beautiful homes makes me feel bad about mine.”
The Enslavement of Debt, Then and Now
“When you acquire an eved Ivri, Israelite debt servant, that person shall serve six years – and shall go free in the seventh year, without payment” (Exodus 21:2).
What is Holy to God? Each of Us
In the second century, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and Rabbi Eliezer, son of Rabbi Yosei, traveled from the Galilee to Rome to plead for the repeal of a royal edict forbidding Shabbat, circumcision, and the laws of ritual purity.
Joseph: Mensch or Menace?
With this week’s Torah portion, we enter the final four (Torah portions, that is) of the Book of Genesis.
Tamar’s Staff, Signet Seal, and Cord
This portion can be read as the first of the Joseph stories or the culmination of the sibling rivalry that has plagued the families of Genesis.
Judah: Our Overlooked Patriarch
Among the prominent themes of the Book of Genesis are sibling rivalry, the supplanting of the firstborn by a younger brother, and difficult family dynamics in general. The pattern is repeated with Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, and Esau and Jacob.
From the Coat of Many Colors to a Simple Garment: The Unmaking of Joseph
It is said that clothes make the man. But in this week's portion, Vayeishev, they have a great deal to do with the unmaking of Joseph.
She Died unto Me
Four years after my grandfather died, my grandmother remarried. She changed her last name from Dunsker to Hyman, and two months later her second husband died of a heart attack. But she kept the last name Hyman for the rest of her life until she died fifteen years later.