Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Has it just vanished in smoke: l'esprit du temps? Several thousand years is a vast patch of history, perhaps in the interim, the novelty of a desert Sanctuary has simply seeped away. All its glory and wondrous color faded and stonewashed like an old beach-towel; its imminence lost on us, far more, in fact, than last week's paper left to yellow in the sun. The Sanctuary's time is not our time or our great-grandparents' time. What chance is there that this Sanctuary can stir our hearts as in days of old? Read more...

On September 22, 2013, the Hollywood Reporter carried this headline on one of its articles: "Emmys 2013: 'The Colbert Report' Ends 'The Daily Show's' 10-Year Winning Streak" (of course, other media outlets had similar headlines and stories; this was just the first one that popped up in my Google search...). Read more...

One morning on the way to school, my son Jeremy asked me, "Are the stories of the Torah real?" Read more...

The animals of the forest were all agitated. They each had to make a choice. It was a simple choice, but the consequences could mean life or death. They could talk of nothing else. It was all tied in to the looming confrontation between Ari, the mountain lion, and Dov, the bear. This conflict had been brewing for some time, ever since that day, three weeks earlier, when Ari had first come into the forest. Read more...

The opening scene of this week's Torah portion is remarkably surprising. God speaks to Moses (ok - that's not so surprising, as it is after all, the most common phrase in the Torah). But what God says is a bit surprising: "I am Adonai. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as El Shaddai (Almighty God), but I did not make myself known to them by my name Adonai." (Exodus 6:2-3) Read more...