…Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? What do we need to do or change in our tefillah to allow it to have a similar impact to CBT? Do you find any of the three strategies Rabbi Sacks shares helpful to you and your tefillah? Which one speaks to you the most? Tefillah in classic Jewish sources Prayer is Service of the Heart: Devarim…
…likeness of God.” (Bereishit 5:1). Ben Zoma preferred, “Shema Yisrael – Listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Devarim 6:4) Ben Nannas said “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Vayikra 19:18) was even more fundamental to Judaism. Then Ben Pazzi came up with a verse from this week’s parsha. He quoted the passuk, “One sheep shall be offered…
…with wonders. He brought us into this place and He gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and with honey. And now I am bringing the first-fruit of the land that You, O Lord, have given me. Devarim 26:5–10 We know this passage because, at least since Second Temple times, it has been a central part of the…
…Devarim, you will see that the word simcha, joy, is not mentioned at all in connection with Pesach. It’s mentioned once in connection with Shavuot, but it’s mentioned twice in connection with Succot: “v’samachta b’chagecha” (Devarim 16:14), at the beginning, and at the end, “v’hayita ach same’ach” (Devarim 16:15). It was this double reference to simcha that caused it to…
…yourselves were strangers in Egypt. Devarim 10:17-19 The Sages went so far as to say that the Torah commands us in only one place to love our neighbour but thirty-six times to love the stranger. What is the definition of a stranger? Clearly, the reference is to one who is not Jewish by birth. It could mean one of the…
…he is your brother” (Devarim 23:7). Finally, God brings it about that Levi, one of the children Yaakov curses on his deathbed, “Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel” (Bereishit 49:6), becomes the father of Israel’s spiritual leaders, Moshe, Aharon and Miriam. From now on, all of Israel is chosen. That is the second rejection of…
…want to examine one example of this influence – touched on briefly in last week’s study, namely the politics of covenant. The book of Devarim / Deuteronomy is the great text of covenantal politics – the idea of a nation linked together in an explicit bond, a foundational text or constitution of mutual responsibility. It is a highly distinctive form…
…can see – not simply because He is so much greater, vaster, than anything our eyes can encompass, but because He belongs to a different dimension of reality altogether. Hence one of the key words of Devarim/Deuteronomy (which means “words”) is Shema, “Hear” or “Listen”: Hear [shema] O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. If you surely…
…and worked, relations between employer and employee, and so on. Far from being confined to private life, the Torah is more interested in the public domain than in the inner odyssey of the soul. Second, its view of politics was radical. Moses knew this and says so constantly throughout Devarim. Israel was to become a nation whose sovereign was not…
…last of the mekorot, I don’t know if you have it here. You know, I’ll explain it, you don’t need to see it in the source, you look at it later. You know, there is a place name in the beginning of Devarim, which is fascinating. You know, right at the beginning of Devarim, Moshe Rabbeinu is recounting some of…