Category: Torah

As a parent, I find myself talking to my children over and over again about making good decisions and taking responsibility for their actions. It is not an easy message to convey. In a time when many leaders deny accountability for their words and their actions, it is not simple to remind ourselves and our children that the choices we make and the words we speak matter, and that they have long term consequences both for us and for others.

In Parshat Netzavim, God tells us once again:

“I call heaven and earth today to bear witness against you: I have placed life and death before you, blessing and curse; and you shall choose life, so that you will live, you and your offspring” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

The greatest gift God has given us as human beings is the freedom of choice and the ability to create our own destinies. Unlike the heavens and the earth, whose roles were set in motion long ago, we can choose how we want to act, if we would like to pursue life or death and if we are in search of blessing or curse.

Read the full article on the Times of Israel

This week’s Torah portion is a challenge. It is not for the faint of heart. Just mention Parashat Ki Tavo and people think: Oh, the Tokhehah. And being told you’re doing things wrong is nobody’s favorite thing — not even when God is the one letting you know. Still, while that may be a reason to avoid the Latter Prophets of the Bible, with their rebuke and rejoinders to the Children of Israel, Ki Tavo should be safe — nobody has done anything wrong yet, so what’s to worry?

But doing the wrong thing is apparently part of our nature. Indeed, by presenting the punishment for wrong-doing before the wrong-doing has even taken place, Parashat Ki Tavo goes beyond a threat to keep us in line. Rather, it seems acknowledge the done deal: we will do wrong and we willbe punished.

This “given” demands interpretation, for the moment we confront the claim that something is part of the human condition, we are left to take it up with the Creator. We can argue that the flaw is in the design, and we should not be blamed for our shortcomings. But if we also take it as a given that God’s prototype is not faulty, we must reflect anew on the human propensity to do wrong and suffer rebuke and punishment.

Read the full article on the Times of Israel

Who is the Moses of our generation? Should we look for one? If so, where? This parsha discusses many different kinds of leadership, and suggests a surprising answer: leadership after Moses does not belong to a single person, but rather to different kinds of people, with different backgrounds and roles.

The book of Deuteronomy is the farewell speech by Moses to his people, and in it he needs to get them ready to live and thrive as a people after his death. In this parsha, Moses answers an important question for the people: who will lead them when he is gone? He does not answer it by naming a specific person, rather by describing kinds of leaders: judges, priests (and Levites), prophets and kings. All of these are potential leaders, and all have different functions.

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Hodge-podge. That precise, academic term is the first that used to come to my mind when thinking of the Book of Deuteronomy. And it didn’t bother me that this was so; in fact, it seemed most fitting. After all, this was Moses’s goodbye speech to the people to whom he had been utterly devoted for the last 40 years. Of course, it’s a jumble of reminiscences of their most memorable times, veiled reprimands, concerned cautions not to fall prey to the idol worship of their soon-to-be-neighbors, and insistent reminders to punctiliously observe the divine commandments that he had bequeathed to them — just as a parent’s last goodbye as they drop their child off at college is often a hodge-podge of recollections of fond memories, advice and admonishments about everything ranging from laundry to finances, cautions against the influences of the campus culture, and pleas to maintain committed to the values they’ve imparted the last 20 years, all in no particular order.

However, years ago, a teacher (I wish I could remember who so I could give him or her credit) recommended an awesome exercise: to read through an entire book of the Torah cover-to-cover, in one sitting. I did so with the Book of Deuteronomy and was stunned by what jumped out from the pages. This seeming hodge-podge of a book is actually all about one singular event! And that event doesn’t even seem all that significant in the grand scheme of Jewish history; I would venture to guess it wouldn’t make it on anyone’s Top Ten list of the Jewish People’s Greatest Moments. That event is the covenant of Mounts Gerizim and Ebal that God commands the Jewish people to enact there, upon entry to the Promised Land.

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This week’s parsha, Parshat Ekev, poses several theologically difficult questions, and in the process of understanding the challenges they pose, we are able to attain a more profound understanding of the relationship between God and humanity.

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Read the full article on the Times of Israel