Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

In every generation, all are obligated to view themselves as having personally left Egypt, since it is said, "And you shall explain to your child on that day, 'It is because of what Adonai did for me when I went free from Egypt'." Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise...and bless the One who performed all these miracles for our ancestors and for us, for bringing us from slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, and subjugation to redemption. --Mishnah, P'sahim.  Also in the Haggadah Read more...

The highest praise a rabbi hears is that her or his sermons and classes are always relevant, by which the generous congregant means that the topics always pertain to the lives of the people in the synagogue and are not arcane or archaic in content.  But another way to translate that praise is to hear it as saying that the rabbi didn’t stretch the congregant’s sense of what pertains to modern living.  If “relevant” means, “something the congregant already has an interest in,” then a rabbi who restricts teaching to those areas simply prevents the congregant from a broader interest i Read more...

Having celebrated Rosh Hodesh Nisan this week – the new month of Nisan, I have naturally turned my attention to the monumental task of cleaning and preparing for Passover.  And, no matter how many times I promise myself that this will be the year that I stop myself from becoming too obsessive about the preparation, at some point in the process, I know (because it happens each year) I will stop in the middle of scrubbing the oven or the sink or the counter or the floor or some other part of the house and ask – ‘Did I forget anything?’  And, it is in this moment that I will undoubte Read more...

The only two certainties of life are death and taxes.  That American proverb accurately reveals our obsession with death.  Throughout human history, great thinkers, spiritual giants, poets, and doctors have devoted their best energy and strongest talents to defeating death.  Occasionally we celebrate minor victories in the skirmish against mortality – we find the cure for a once-fatal illness, a new diet allows people to live a little longer or a little better.  But we win those battles knowing that the war will ultimately be lost forever.  Each of us has to die. Read more...

According to the ancient Babylonian myth of the creation of the world, the culmination of the creation process is the erection of a temple to the pagan deity, Marduk. What that structure makes clear is that the holiness of space is primary, and that its' crowning representation is the holy space where Marduk was worshiped. In stark contrast to the glorification of holy space, the Torah's account of Creation establishes the capstone of creation not as any place in particular, or even any space at all. Read more...