Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Imagine that you are about to receive one of the biggest pieces of news in your life. Maybe it is the results from a medical test or the sex of your unborn child. Perhaps you are waiting on a college decision or results from a big job interview. I wonder, is this the type of news that you want to hear alone, or would you rather be surrounded by the people that know and love you? Read more...

How do we know what events will be remembered? What will go down in history as something extraordinary? Something life-changing? Living in the present, we can never know if an event will stand the test of time. Unless, of course, that event is the splitting of the Red Sea. An event so monumental that even as it was happening, it was as if it was already recorded in the annals of history. Read more...

I do not really have time to be writing this drash. As I sit at my computer this morning, there are many other things I could and should be doing – including packing. I will be spending this week in Maryland, teaching for my rabbinic colleagues at an annual educational retreat humorously know among us rabbi-types as “rabbi camp.” Nor is this unpacked, unprepared state of affairs an anomaly for me. I describe my personal organizational style as being a “triage-er” – everything is done eventually, but only when it becomes the most pressing emergency on my to-do list. Read more...

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One of the great mysteries of Moses’ life is when he learns his own origin story. We, the readers, know that the infant Moses was saved by a collection of rebellious women – the midwives who deliver him and do not turn him over to the authorities, the mother and sister who hatch a desperate plot of place him in a basket on the Nile, the princess who takes a foundling child into the palace and raises him there as a son. However, the Torah is silent on when and how the young Moses discovers his slave origins. Read more...