Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

The suffering of innocents raises one of the most painful and intractable moral dilemmas for people of faith:   If there is a good God, then how can that God allow the innocent to suffer.  A good God should be able to construct a just world, one in which people pay for their own evil, but don’t suffer as a consequence of wicked decisions or hateful actions that they did not formulate themselves.  What a world that would be! Read more...

The task seems explicit: Moses instructs a select group of the leaders of Israel’s tribes to conduct a scouting expedition into the Promised Land. There, they are to observe carefully and return with the factual data that will allow Israel to plan the best approach to entering the land. Twelve individuals are selected – the spies – in later nomenclature. And Moses enumerates the facts they need to amass: Read more...

When I first came to Congregation Eilat, in Mission Viejo, California, fresh out of Rabbinical School, many of my congregants were struck by how young I seemed. How, they wondered, could this kid be our rabbi? Others responded by trying to help me in the areas of my deficiencies, one of which is my lack of knowledge of the Yiddish language. One congregant in particular made it his business to teach me important Yiddish expressions. He was certain that these phrases captured the essence of Jewish wisdom and could spell the difference between a successful rabbinate and a disaster. Read more...

God Bless You.  Three words said so easily when someone we care about sneezes.  Grateful that the loved one’s breathing has been restored and hopeful that illness is not coming near, we invoke God’s blessing without hesitation and with joy and glee.  Yet, these same three words – God bless you – in almost any other context leaves some of us squirming, wondering how un-Jewish it sounds to walk around saying God bless you to everyone and under any circumstances. Read more...

It's a familiar story:  The Jews are wandering in the wilderness and Moses and the people decide to send spies into the Land of Israel to see what kind of a place it is they're heading toward.  Of the 12 spies to go on this mission, 10 return horrified.  The place is filled with giants!  We don't stand a chance against them!  The people, upon hearing this terrifying message, panic: "If only we had died in the land of Egypt!  Or if only we might die in this wilderness!  Why is the Lord taking us to that land to fall by the sword?  Our wives and childre Read more...