Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

There is a place beyond which words cannot go. Try as we might, words can only allude to our most deeply felt emotions: Wonder, marvel, awe. Designed to help us communicate about ideas, facts, and values, words lose their power when it comes to the depths of human feelings, to an almost mystical connection to other living things and to life itself. Words get us to the shore, but to move to the depths we have to discard our words for other modes of expression. Read more...

What does it mean to serve God? Often, when we think of religious people, we think of those who have a zealous attachment to God, a strong sense of what God wants from them and from humanity. Unfortunately, their energy and devotion can sometimes translate into imposing their preferences on the rest of the world, as though their religious passion is the only possible measure of right and wrong. Matters a few define as “spiritual”, or issues of death and afterlife, rise high on their agendas, and force their way into public discourse intrusively and excessively. Read more...

Every culture identified insiders and outsiders, those select few who represent communal ideals and the despised few whose differences make them seem threatening to the rest of us.  For the vast majority, straddled between the ideals and the rejects, life is an effort to seem more like the former and to distance us from the latter.  The emotional security of the majority seems to require construing some unfortunates as demons, rather than as fellow human beings simply trying their best to get along. Read more...

Contemporary humanity is marked by its relentless assertion “I’ve got to be me.”  So secure are we that individual self-expression is the highest possible ideal, that we often assume our own propriety as a matter of course.  If someone won’t do as we say, if there is a conflict between us and someone else, then the presumption is that they are in the wrong.  If our own urges conflict with the communal interest, we assert our individual drive above the needs of the community. Read more...

Tick, tick, tick – each day, the clock chimes, counting the twenty four hours, one thousand four hundred forty minutes, eighty six thousand four hundred seconds.  The days pass and suddenly we awake wondering where all the time has gone and how it passed so quickly.  I am reminded in this of the lyrics of the famous Steve Miller Band song which speaks of the passing of time: Time keeps on slipping Into the future; Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping Into the future Read more...