Why do we need to tell our kids that they can’t do important things for their own sake, but only to get some kind of reward? The notion of manicures for middle school girls in a Jewish school disturbs me on a variety of levels. Since Elana Sztokman wrote so well about why they are…
Genesis 18:1–22:24 You Shall Hear the Cry of the Oppressed The thought of commenting on Parashat Vayera immediately prompts the desire to write something soothing, to get away from the binding of Isaac, the destruction of Sodom and the strange story of Sarah’s strange pregnancy. The portion has other, gentler lessons to teach – for…
Most religious affirmations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been “negative” ones: They argue that Leviticus (and Romans and Corinthians) doesn’t really prohibit homosexuality, or that ancient prohibitions should be set aside in the age of the iPad. But isn’t there a “positive” case, as well — that biblical religious values support the…
“Everything is in the hands of Heaven except for reverence of Heaven” (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berachot, 33b) In his commentary of this week’s portion, Lech Lecha, Avraham Burg takes issue with the concept of faith. Weaving together late antiquity Midrash, Maimonides and his own hermeneutics, Burg charts his namesake, the original Abraham, as he who…
Abraham and Isaac — or, as some would have it, Ibrahim and Ishmael — took center stage when a panel including Muslim imams and some of America’s most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis discussed their respective legal systems and foundational texts, and their implications for Jewish-Muslim relations today. The October 30 seminar “Ancient Texting” brought together…
What if Noah had been an exemplary spiritual leader and not just, as the Torah tells us, a righteous person by the standards of his own generation? Picture Noah as a true prophet of his time, a man who knows that God is about to destroy the world. Such a person would have done far…
Genesis 5:9–11:32 For years I was extremely critical of Noah. I didn’t like his silent character, his failure to open his mouth, to utter even a single word of protest as God stormed across the world in his murderous, watery rage. Unlike Abraham at Sodom, unlike Moses facing the sin of the Golden Calf. I…
Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures By Talya Fishman University of Pennsylvania Press, 424 pages, $65 Basic to Jewish religious teaching is the distinction between “written” Torah — Scripture, the Jewish Bible — and so-called “oral” Torah, a diffuse tradition of legal and homiletic rabbinic commentary…
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