In Parashat Mishpatim, which we will read this coming Shabbat, we find ourselves situated between a mountain (Mount Sinai) and a Mishkan (the portable desert Tabernacle). The juxtaposition of the other-worldly grandeur of the Sinaitic revelation and the...

In this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, we encounter one of the most epic moments in the Torah.At the foot of Mount Sinai, accompanied by thunder and lightning, the newly freed Israelites enter into a new covenant with their Redeemer. They hear the Ten...

This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shirah, the Shabbat of Song. It is so named because the Torah reading this week includes Shirat HaYam, the “Song of the Sea,” the earliest example of shirah in the Bible. More than just a song, shirah is a genre of...

The Torah portion for this week, Bo, is filled with plagues (three, to be exact), darkness, laws of Passover, the commandment to sanctify the new moon, borrowed items and pidyon ha-ben — redemption of the first-born son. This is a story about our liberation...

This week’s Torah reading describes the first seven of the 10 plagues that were intended to demonstrate how the power of the God of Israel surpasses that of Pharaoh and a host of lesser Egyptian gods and goddesses. At first, it appears that these...

After I graduated from college, I spent a year working for Facing History and Ourselves, an international organization whose mission is to use lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.One of Facing History’s...

I write this message during a season of endings. The secular year is coming to its close, and this Shabbat we fittingly will read the concluding parashah of B’reyshit, the Book of Genesis. Our Torah Reading is Va-y’chi, Genesis 47:28-50:26, which...

There is an important principle in Jewish law, which states that all Jews are responsible for one another: Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh BaZeh. This idea was perhaps first demonstrated by Yehudah, who, as we read in last week’s parsha, told his father,...

How much attention do you pay to your dreams? Clearly, the Pharaoh of Egypt (and his courtiers, as we heard in last week’s Torah Portion!) took their (and the Pharaoh’s!) dreams very seriously.  And in this week’s Parashah of Miketz, the Torah...

In our book this week, father Jacob thought he was going to settle down, so he sent me after my brothers.I couldn’t find them but I go when called. I wouldn’t make so much of that I don’t have the energy to be anywhere else. My present is demanding...

In Parashat Vayishlach, Jacob receives a new name that becomes the name of the Jewish people: Israel.This moment in Genesis 32 is essential to every generation, especially in the fraught times in which we live. Jacob faces what he believes is an existential...

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Charan. He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. He had a dream; a stairway was...