…off to make way for an extended account of the sacrifices to be brought on the various days of the year. Following that comes the section with which parshat Matot begins, about vows and oaths. Why is it here? There is a superficial answer. There is a verbal link with the penultimate verse of the previous parsha: “These shall you…
…his Av Beis Din, Rabbi Yehoshua. On the other side is the greatest Sage of their time, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Akiva is sitting on his other side because Rabbi Akiva was the Rav of Bnei Brak where this was taking place. And on the outer side were the two Sages, the elders, the zekeinim, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Tarfon….
Between the Flood and the call to Abraham, between the universal covenant with Noah and the particular covenant with one people, comes the strange, suggestive story of Babel: The whole world spoke the same language, the same words. And as the people migrated from the east they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said…
…undermine families, communities, traditions, loyalties, and shared codes of reverence and restraint. Despite its enormous emphasis on the value of the individual, Judaism also insists on the value of those institutions that preserve and protect our identities as members of groups that make them up. We have rights as individuals but identities only as members of tribes. Honouring both is…
In parshat Va’era we read for the first time, not of Pharaoh hardening his heart but of God doing so: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” said God to Moses, “and multiply My signs and wonders in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 7:3). And so indeed we find in the sixth plague, boils (Ex. 9:12), the eighth, locusts (Ex. 10:1, 20),…
…this focus have removed Moses from the passage entirely? Is there any larger significance to his absence? The commentators offered various suggestions.[1] One given in the Talmud refers to an event at the beginning of Moses’ leadership: his encounter with God at the burning bush. Moses repeatedly expressed reluctance to undertake the mission of leading the people out of Egypt….
A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible I Believe is a personal and intimate demonstration of how Rabbi Sacks came to see the world through listening attentively to the Torah and its message for the present and all times. This is the latest book in the Covenant & Conversation series of themed books, written by Rabbi Sacks on the weekly Torah portion. The…
…graduate of the LSJS Bradfield Women’s Leadership Programme, the Cambridge Coexist Interfaith Programme and a Wohl Scholar, following her participation in the Harvard Graduate School of Education Leadership programme. She is married to Stuart, and they have four children and two granddaughters. < Back to The Sacks Scholars More from Rachel Fink Covenant & Conversation Family Edition for Va‘era featuring…
…approach. Alternatively, we could say that in these cases the end justifies the means. In the case of the birthright, Jacob might have been testing Esau to see if he really cared about it. Since he gave it away so readily, Jacob might be right in concluding that it should go to one who valued it. In the case of…
…began, as you know, in those fertile alluvial river valleys, the Nile Delta on the one hand but, more importantly, the valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates which was, of course, the birthplace of civilisation. Now you know that that particular flat area of Mesopotamia was subject to periodical flooding and that is why, from virtually every ancient literature…