Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

The intertwined questions of how we are to understand the nature of God, and how best to address God, are ones that concern Jews (and other believers) at all time, but perhaps no time quite so strongly as during the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the ten days of repentance that encompass them. Read more...

How shall we know what God wants of us? After all, if we do not have a clear message from God, and if we cannot be confident in the ways of discerning God's will that we do have, the very foundation of Judaism as a religion founded on God's word is undermined. So how can we know God's will on any specific question? Read more...

As Jews we embrace each new season. Spring, and the month of Nisan, is the season of our renewal as a People. With Pesach we celebrate our redemption by the hand of God and our birth as a Nation. We begin our summer with the month of Sivan and the holiday of Shevuoth, the commemoration of the revelation of God's Law at Sinai. Read more...

This week's Torah portion, and a full moon in the sky, have led me to pose our opening question. In a Torah reading where so many promises and threats are woven together one needs to stop and ask, "What, perhaps, is God afraid of in His/Her relationship with people?" or subsequently, "What are human beings, perhaps, afraid of in their relationship with God?" I'm drawn to this question by virtue of an observation that is made in chapter 28, verse 47: Read more...

It is a rabbinic dictum not to attempt to weigh the value of one mitzvah against the other. Rather than saying that this mitzvah is more important than another, we are to recognize that all mitzvot are grounded in our brit (covenant) with the Holy One and derive their authority out of our chosen response to God's will. Read more...