…haven’t quite got over 1776 yet, but we stand in awed admiration of your achievements. The real task is to know what is the destination? That is the vision-driven leadership, which has characterised Judaism from the very beginning. From the moment that Abraham hears a call, “Lech lecha me’artzecha, umimmoladetecha umibeit avicha el ha’aretz asher ar’eka,” (Bereishit 12:1) to go…
…just going back to what you said in the beginning of this phase, I would not leave it with the women alone. I like it when men and women do it together, after all. Rabbi Sacks: Total agreement here. I have to say that you read Tanach, you read Torah, you read Sefer Bereishit. It’s a book about strong women. Sarah…
…Patrick McGuiness (New York: Routledge, 2003), 69. [6] Ibid., 70. [7] See Bereishit Rabbah 8:5. [8] Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature, New York:Viking, 2011. [9] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 5.89. [10] Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 13ff. [11] Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Temurah 4:13. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR NOACH Why do we need moral laws? Do you…
…of Isaac but also Ishmael, not just Jacob but also Esau. The moral could not be more powerful. Never seek your brother’s blessing. Be content with your own.[3] [1] Critical readings of Rebecca’s or Jacob’s conduct appear in several midrashic works: Bereishit Rabbah, Tanhuma (Buber), Yalkut Reuveni, Midrash ha-Neelam and Midrash Socher Tov (to Psalm 80:6). Among critical commentators are R. Eliezer Ashkenzi, Tzeda le-Derech, and R. Yaakov Zvi Mecklenberg, Ha-Ktav veha-Kabbalah….
…biblically: see Deut. 13:13-19, 1 Samuel 15:13-26, Esther 9:10, 9:15-16. [2] The Midrash is critical of Dina: see Midrash Aggadah (Buber) to Gen. 34:1. Midrash Sechel Tov is even critical of her mother Leah for permitting her to go out to Shechem. [3] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melachim 9:14. [4] Arama, Akeidat Yitzchak, Bereishit, Vayera, Gate 20, s.v. UVeMidrash. [5] Sternberg, Meir. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and…
…free. Sustained by the blessings of God, we can become greater than anyone, even ourselves, could foresee. [1] Rashi to Gen. 49:1; Pesachim 56a; Bereishit Rabbah 99:5. [2] Brachot 10a. Would you like to know the future? Why? How does not knowing the future allow us to be free? What do you think your future holds, and how can you…
Excavating the history of words can sometimes be as revealing as excavating the ruins of an ancient city. Take the English word “enthusiasm”. Today we see this as something positive. One dictionary defines it as “a feeling of energetic interest in a particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it.” People with enthusiasm have passion, zest…
…and plant the seed and wait for it to ripen and then reap it and then winnow and thresh it and then turn it into flour, but I made it myself. Hashem gave us the land and we added the work. Hashem gave us the rain, but we did the planting. We were shutafin in Ma’aseh Bereishit. We were God’s…
There is a deep question at the heart of Jewish faith, and it is very rarely asked. As the Torah opens we see God creating the universe day by day, bringing order out of chaos, life out of inanimate matter, flora and fauna in all their wondrous diversity. At each stage God sees what He has made and declares it…
…“It was God’s good pleasure that there should be a fusion [of divine providence and human choice] and that the will of man with his virtue and vice should be admitted to the council-chamber of fate” (Antiquities, xviii, 1, 3). Nowhere is this clearer than in the life of Joseph as told in Bereishit, and nowhere more so than in…