The festival of Shavuot is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Here is how this week’s sedra describes and defines it: From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of…
This week’s sedra outlines the festivals that give rhythm and structure to the Jewish year. Examining them carefully, however, we see that Succot is unusual, unique. One detail which had a significant influence on Jewish liturgy appears later on in the book of Deuteronomy: “Be joyful at your feast . . . For seven days celebrate the Feast to the Lord…
The human body contains 100 trillion cells. Within each cell is a nucleus. Within each nucleus is a double copy of the human genome. Each genome contains 3.1 billion letters of genetic code, enough if transcribed to fill a library of five thousand books. Each cell, in other words, contains a blueprint of the entire body of which it is…
The festival of Shavuot is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Here is how Shavuot is described and defined in parshat Emor: From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering…
…of studying Jewish texts. We are at the moment in the midst of fulfilling one of the commands in this week’s sedra of Emor (in the Diaspora), the counting of the Omer: “From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the…
There is something very strange about the festival of Succot, of which our parsha is the primary source. On the one hand, it is the festival supremely associated with joy. It is the only festival in our parsha that mentions rejoicing: “And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days” (Lev. 23:40). In the Torah as a whole,…
Time management is more than management and larger than time. It is about life itself. God gives us one thing above all: life itself. And He gives it to us all on equal terms. However rich we are, there are still only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and a span of years that, however long,…
Our parsha begins with a restriction on the people for whom a kohen may become tamei, a word usually translated as “defiled, impure, ceremonially unclean.” A priest may not touch or be under the same roof as a dead body. He must remain aloof from close contact with the dead, with the exception of a close relative, defined in our…
In its account of the festivals of the Jewish year, this week’s parsha contains the following statement: You shall dwell in thatched huts for seven days. Everyone included in Israel must live in such thatched huts. This is so that future generations will know that I caused the Israelites to live in succot when I brought them out of Egypt….