Weekly Torah Reading, Ki Tavo, September 24, 2016
Reuben, Where Art Thou? “Today,” Moses tell the Israelites, “you have become the people of the Lord your God” (Deut 27:9) Our Rabbis asked: What did he mean by “today”? Wasn’t Israel chosen to be God’s own people forty …
Weekly Torah Reading, Ki Tetze, September 17, 2016
All About Amalek At the very end of this week’s reading comes a well-known commandment, “Remember what Amalek did to you along the way as you were leaving Egypt.” The reference is to the battle fought between the Amalekites …
Weekly Torah Reading, Shofetim, September 10, 2016
A Hollow Ring I suspect many speakers of modern Hebrew are fooled by the second word in this week’s Torah reading. In today’s Israel, shoterim are policemen—and this same root also underlies the collective mishtarah, “police.” But there were …
Weekly Torah Reading, Re’eh, September 2, 2016
Forming Different Groups “You are children of the Lord your God,” it says in this week’s Torah reading (Deut 14:1). But what could this possibly mean? In what sense can God be said to have children of any sort, …
Weekly Torah Reading, Ekev, August 27, 2016
Not Only Bread The expression “Not by bread alone” has certainly gotten around: it is, among other things, the name of a website promoting a farmer’s market in Green Bay, Wisconsin; the title of a Russian novel by Vladimir …
Weekly Torah Reading, Va’etḥannan, August 20, 2016
The Men of Jericho According to one rabbinic tradition, when the “men of Jericho” recited the Shema, they would say it in a slightly different way from that followed by Jews nowadays. They would “bind it” with what follows; …
Weekly Torah Reading, Devarim (August 13, 2016)
How? It is relatively rare that two words in two languages mean exactly the same thing all the time. For example, the equivalent of “house” in English is usually bayit in Hebrew—except when it isn’t. If, on a telephone call, …
Weekly Torah Reading, Mattot-Mas‘ei, August 6, 2016
(In Israel, the reading is Mas‘ei alone; outside Israel, Mattot and Mas‘ei are combined, as below:) Mattot Biblical narratives usually have some clear bit of information or some lesson to impart: “This is how such-and-such a thing came …