Weekly Torah Reading, Vayyera’, October 27, 2018
“Now I know…”—“Didn’t You Know Before?” Nowadays, this week’s Torah reading justly troubles a great many readers. It contains the famous account of God’s command to Abraham to kill his own son, sacrificing him like some animal on an …
Weekly Torah Reading, Lekh-Lekha, October 20, 2018
Abraham’s Request This week’s reading contains one particularly puzzling episode. After Abraham has arrived in Canaan, a famine strikes the land, and he and his wife Sarah are forced to travel down to Egypt in search of food. (Egypt, …
Weekly Torah Reading, Noah, October 13, 2018
The Height of Mystery This week’s Torah reading ends with a somewhat mysterious incident, the building of the Tower of Babel. The Torah recounts that a ragtag band of people (apparently all of humanity at the time) traveled “from …
Weekly Torah Reading Bereshit October 6, 2018
Childbirth and the Creation of Eve; also, Eve Was No “Helpmate” According to Leviticus chapter 12, if a woman gives birth to a male baby, she remains in a state of ritual impurity (tum’ah) for seven days. But if she …
Weekly Torah Reading, September 29, 2018
The Shabbat of “Booths” Sukkot is a somewhat puzzling festival. To start with, it’s not clear what the role of the sukkah was in the biblical celebration. True, the Torah does say (Lev 23:43) that the Israelites dwelled in …
Weekly Torah Reading Ha’azinu September 22, 2018
Biblical Poetry This week’s reading consists of Moses’ farewell song, known in Hebrew by its first word Ha’azinu (“Give ear!”). In it, Moses recounts Israel’s recent history, starting back in “days of yore,” but he goes on to foretell …
Weekly Torah Reading Vayyelekh September 15, 2018
Moses Didn’t Want to Die In this week’s Torah reading, God instructs Moses that the time has come for him to die—in fact, He says this more than once. The reading opens with Moses relating that “the Lord said …
A Rosh ha-Shanah Card, 5779
A Rosh ha-Shanah Card, 5779 “A day on which the horn is sounded” (Num 29:1)—is this really the best that the Torah could do to describe Rosh ha-Shanah? Perhaps it was all that needed to be said back …