David Curzon
By David Curzon
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News Un-Freudian Principles Of Dream Interpretation
And Pharaoh dreamed “he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, well-favored and fat-fleshed; and they grazed in the reed-grass.” But the seven thin cows that came after them ate them up, and the seven fat blades of wheat in the next dream are eaten by seven…
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News He Didn’t Even Have His Name Straight
Here is the call to Abraham: “Now the Lord said unto Abram: Get thee [Lech Lecha, Go! Go! or perhaps, Get going!] out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee.” [Genesis 12:1] This call is of universal applicability, as we might expect…
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News Reacting to Rejection: A Parable
This week is the beginning of the annual cycle of readings from the Torah. How are we to turn this material around in our minds, and assimilate it, in a manner that does not compromise either our respect for tradition or our contemporary sense of reason and morality? One traditional method of understanding the relevance…
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News What Are the Blessings and Curses of Freedom?
See, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: the blessing if you hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God… and the curse if you shall not hearken…. — Deuteronomy 11:26 The opening of this week’s portion, Re’eh, establishes the exercise of free will, and the blessings and curses of…
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News Loving Neighbors as Yourself
This week’s portion, Kedoshim, is a collection of injunctions, mainly ethical. In the JPS translation, Leviticus 19:18 reads: “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” W. H. Auden, in an early poem, offers a sly critique of the problems posed by the attempt to put this commandment into practice: “You shall love your…
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News A Small Anthology for Pesach
In the great modern exodus of Russian Jews from the Soviet Union during the 1980s, many of those who came to New York worked for a while as taxi drivers, as other immigrants have done before and since. On a day during this exodus I started a conversation with my Russian taxi driver by saying,…
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News The Analyses of Acute Diagnostic Minds
This week’s portion, Tazria, is concerned with purity and contamination. It contains many passages along these lines: And when a man or woman hath a plague upon the head… the priest shall look on the plague, and, behold, if the appearance thereof be deeper than the skin, and there be in it yellow thin hair,…
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News A Summons With the Character of a Call
This week’s portion, Vayikra, opens with a phrase translated as “And the Lord called to Moses.” The call to a prophet such as Moses summons him to a task, a vocation, a calling, that is not freely chosen, a task that the true prophet shrinks from because he feels, and is, inadequate to it. The…
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