Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Only God knows if / when / where / why you were on a blind date. All I can remember from the last one I was on, about twenty years ago, is that it was in the lobby of the King David hotel in Yerushalayim. I have no recollection of the name of the person I was with or what he looked like. I do remember the shock on his face when he asked me: "If you could go back anywhere in time and history, where would you like to go?" I replied, "Can I take my toilet with me? Because if not, I won't go back further than indoor plumbing, but if yes, I'll give your question a second thought." Read more...

Often, minor miracles of our biblical stories are overshadowed by the grandiose. This week, Shabbat Shira offers another example of this phenomenon. The "primary" miracle this week is, of course, the splitting of the Red Sea. The image of the waters parting with millions of ex-slaves dredging through the muddy sea floor will never cease to capture our collective imaginations. But it is the (seeming) minor miracle, the journey to the water that fascinates me; that liminal space between slavery and freedom that draws me into its midst this week. Read more...

Those who read this column regularly will recall that last summer I wrote about my experience of visiting the Abayudaya community in Uganda. What I didn't write about at that time was my two experiences with darkness during our visit. The first - on Erev Shabbat in the village on Nabugoye Hill - when the electricity went out (as it does regularly in their community) in the middle of Shabbat evening services, and stayed out until Shabbat morning. Read more...

Moses said, "I will turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn't the bush burn up?" When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: "Moses! Moses!" He answered, "Here I am." (Exodus 3:3-4) What did the voice of God sound like to Moses? What does it sound like to us? And how do we know that it is God talking and not a figment of our imagination? Read more...

Put yourself in Jacob's place. Laying on his death bed, he is filled with apprehensions about the special way of understanding God and the world that his grandfather, Abraham, established. It wasn't so long ago, he must have mused, that everyone worshipped a multiplicity of deities, that people sacrificed children to their gods, that they gashed themselves with knives as part of a religious fervor, that cultic prostitution was an integral part of worship. Read more...