Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

In this week's Torah reading both Miriam and Aharon die. Despite the difference in the description of their deaths, Rashi, quoting the Babylonian Talmud (Mo'ed Katan, 28a), teaches us that she too was among the seven that died 'al pi Hashem' / by the mouth of God. This is considered to be the highest form of death, the easiest death. It is a death in which the image that is offered is that God, so-to-speak, inhales into God's-self the last breath of the person, as they exhale. Read more...

"The first issue of the womb of every being, man or beast, that is offered to the Lord shall be yours, but you shall have the first-born of man redeemed... Take as their redemption price, from the age of one month up, the money equivalent of five shekels by the sanctuary weight, which is twenty gerahs. (Numbers 18:15-16) Read more...

This is the age of vicarious virtue: all of us prefer to continue living our lives in much the same way we always have, and all of us want our leaders to adhere to the standard of our words. In that way, we get to enjoy our own laxity while still claiming credit for the morality of our ideals. Our mouths toot one thing and our deeds blare a different, more gaudy, tune. Read more...

The set-up: Moses instructs twelve spies, one for each of Israel's tribes, to investigate the characteristics of the land the people are about to enter. They travel throughout the land of Israel during the course of forty days, and they return to the camp bearing an enormous load of the fruit of the land. Yet when they return, their testimony is contradictory. On the one hand, they assert that the land is one which "flows with milk and honey," a land bounteous and fertile. Read more...

Several years ago, one of our rabbinic students came to me for advice. Having just completed the first round of interviews for his first time full time rabbinic position, he returned full of excitement and anticipation about process and about his future as rabbi. Now, any of us who have ever engaged in a full job search process knows how important the art of interviewing can be; and how much more so in the rabbinate. Read more...