This week we begin the annual cycle of Torah reading anew, turning back to the biblical account of creation of the world.  In six days, God creates the world – light and darkness; the water and sky; dry land and the seas; the sun, moon and stars; fish and birds; animals and, of course, human beings.  And, it was good.  In fact, as the Torah teaches, by the end of the sixth day, God saw that it was very good.  Read more...

In today’s world, many people spend more time at their place of employment than they do with their loved ones.  In fact, if you think about it, the average adult will likely spend more than 100,000 hours of their lifetime on the job.  So, what it is it about our work that often leads to such an imbalance of time allocation?   Read more...

A good deal of debate goes into the nature of the truth of Torah. Is the Torah’s truth to be found on the level of chronology ­ is it true the way a reliable history book is true? Or is the Torah’s truth to be found on the level of information is it true the way a comprehensive science textbook is true? Or, perhaps, there is a third way, on the level of meaning and purpose, that the truth of Torah is to be found? As we begin this year’s cycle of Torah readings, perhaps it is fitting to return to beginnings, to re-examine the import of what the Torah seeks to convey.   Read more...

It is a fact of history that all of the Rabbis of the Talmudic age were men. Actually, every Rabbi -- from antiquity to modernity -- were men until 1972, when the first woman was ordained. Similarly, in other religious and secular traditions, the male perspective has dominated almost exclusively -- to the extent that "man" was a term used to mean humanity and the pronoun "he" was considered gender-neutral.   Read more...

One of the great debates within the environmental community is the proper human posture toward the preservation of diverse species.  On the one hand, there are those who argue that extinction is the normal method through which nature keeps itself trim.  Throughout the eons, a great many species have gone the way of the Dodo bird and the stegosaurus -- no longer able to compete successfully for a habitable niche in a difficult world.  Read more...