At its outset, today's Torah portion states that "The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai" and then commences a detailed exposition of the laws of the Shemittah--the seventh year, in which the land must lie fallow as testimony to God's exclusive ownership of all.
Rabbi Artson discusses how to make love last and contemporary Jewish thought in this weeks podcast.
Rabbi Artson records his podcast in a Q and A format in this series. He answers a variety of questions on Europe and the Holocaust in this segment.
If you tell a child, "don't move an inch," what do they do? They move, an inch. Why? Because they know you don't literally mean, "an inch" and, most children enjoy proving you wrong! Jewish tradition rarely suffices itself with literal reading. Even those with distaste for more mystical, esoteric readings of the Torah understand that the literal understanding of a verse is rarely its simple, plain (p'shat) meaning.
If you tell a child, "don't move an inch," what do they do? They move, an inch. Why? Because they know you don't literally mean, "an inch" and, most children enjoy proving you wrong! Jewish tradition rarely suffices itself with literal reading. Even those with distaste for more mystical, esoteric readings of the Torah understand that the literal understanding of a verse is rarely its simple, plain (p'shat) meaning.
In this podcast episode, Rabbi Artson discusses the Shema prayer.
Every living thing exhibits a balance between alteration and continuity. A single cell, for example, takes in new substances (food, air, water) and remolds those building blocks to fashion its own form. At the same time that its constituents change, its shape remains the same. Persistence and change, it seems, are simply different phases of the same phenomenon, different faces of the same reality. One cannot successfully remain and thrive without an openness to change, and one cannot retain the energy and will to change without a commitment to something timeless and constant.
Rabbi Artson uses a Q and A format for this week's podcast. In this segment, he answers questions on topics such as life after death, Halakhah, the Haggadah and more.
This is the first of two segments on Jewish food justice. In this segment, Rabbi Artson talks about how to set the agenda for food justice.
In this segment, Rabbi Artson does his podcast in a Q and A format. He talks about contemporary issues such as teaching teens, pluralism, does belief in God matter and more.