There is almost as much to unpack in this section of the Torah (Behaalotcha) as there is to unpack from these past weeks and months.  In fact, there is so much to unpack, that I will need a little help; no, a lot of help.  It’s always a good thing...

Below please find some words of Torah that I was able to share with the recent graduates of the Saul Mirowitz Jewish Community School. Though the message is clearly addressed to the graduates, I have been asked by several parents, grandparents, educators...

“Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair …” So goes the title song from the 1967 musical “Hair” that became a major hit for the Cowsills two years later. Some of us may look at ourselves today and recall that or another song or verse...

As summer begins and a period of calmer, warmer days sets in, our tradition calls us back to the wilderness. This week, Jewish communities all over the world will prepare to retell the story of the giving and receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai recounted...

In our tradition, the Holy-Day of Shavuot, the middle of our Shalosh Regalim, our three pilgrimage festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot, is unique in several ways. First, it is the only one not assigned a specific date by the Torah on the Jewish calendar...

With Parashat B’midbar, we begin reading Sefer B’midbar, the Book of Numbers, which recounts the stories of the people of Israel’s time living in the midbar, the desert wilderness. It is to the midbar that the Israelites go upon leaving Egypt, and...

D’var Torah:  Parashat EMORAdonai said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None shall become ritually impure for any [dead] person among their kin, except for the relatives that are closest to them: their mother, their...

Imagine that a disease breaks out in the community, actually a family of diseases, perhaps, because it presents differently in many cases. No one knows exactly how it is transmitted, and no one knows who patient zero is. Worst of all, no one knows exactly...

“And Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his offering pan, put fire in it, placed incense upon it, and brought before God a foreign fire, which God had not commanded. And a fire went forth from before God and consumed them both, and they died...

The Book of Leviticus, especially the first few portions, are filled with intricate details of the many types sacrifices God commanded the Israelites to make. In Hebrew, the word for sacrifice is korban, which comes from a Hebrew root, meaning “to draw...

I hear Leviticus speaking. Leviticus and Dante got together in the form of a virus, a nonlocal reminder in the language of Leviticus – purity and impurity — that all of us are in this together. I hear Deuteronomy speaking. We will be judged by the...

We have been reading this richly symbolic section of the Torah on the Mishkan, the mobile sacred dwelling place for the Divine Presence. As we complete the reading of the instructions in Parashat Ki Tissa, it is worth thinking about how we create the...