Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Since the high holidays and Sukkot will be upon us soon, let’s talk this week about springtime holidays… No, really – as you’ll see in a moment I’m actually quite serious about this. One of the most familiar verses of this week’s parashah is famous for the way in which it has long been creatively (mis)quoted in Jewish liturgy, that is, in a crucial ceremony of the Jewish calendar. In (transliterated) Hebrew it reads: “Arami oved avi” (Deut. 26:5) Read more...

This week’s Torah reading records that before going out to battle, the Israelite troops would gather together to hear from their leaders. The generals would give the orders, and then a priest would step forward and bless the assembled soldiers. He would say to them: “Hear, O Israel! You are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your heart falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them. For it is the Adonai your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory” (Deuteronomy 20:3-4). Read more...

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A central theme of Parashat Eikev is contingency: that a person’s fate is predicated on their actions, and the future is not yet written. A core problem occupying medieval philosophers, including the classical Torah commentators, the question of causality continues to fascinate—and elude—us today. In our own time, it tends to be scientists who explore the way that cause and effect play out in time. Physicists debate the linearity of time, with some advancing the block universe theory in which causality is an illusion created by human cognitive processes. Read more...

Why do I show up to teach my classes at American Jewish University?  For a whole variety of reasons.  I love teaching.  I signed a contract to do so (I promised).  I owe it to the students, who paid tuition.  I am being paid.  Responses from students challenge me to think in new ways, thus enriching and expanding my scholarship and writing.  I am deeply committed to Judaism for reasons that I have thought about a lot, and I am glad to be training the next generation of rabbis and lay leaders for the Jewish community.  I want people to think well of me Read more...