Every fifty years, the Torah tells us, we’re supposed to go back and start again. We’re to sound the trumpet on Yom Kipur and proclaim yoveil, the Jubilee, a time of release, rest, and restoration. If you have had to sell your family property — even if you sold it decades ago — it is to be returned to you. No matter how far off track you’ve gone, you get another chance. You get to try again.
Unless you live in a walled city, of course.
Read MoreVayiqra 21:17 is not a commandment, it is a warning. It is long past time more of our communities heeded it.
Read MoreThere is a story I read somewhere ages ago, the origin of which I can no longer track down, about a feminist philosopher presenting a paper at some academic conference or other. When it came time for the Q&A, some smarmy asshat in the audience piped up to demand, “OK, but what does this have to do with Heidegger?”. The presenter walked to the front of the stage and sat on the lip, to get as close as possible to this guy’s face, and then, with all her force, yelled, “WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HEIDEGGER? FUCK HEIDEGGER!”. She then stood up, walked back to the lectern, and calmly explained the relationship of her work to Heidegger’s in appropriately academic terms.
I think about this story all the time, and feel it especially acutely when it comes to this verse and others like it.
Read MoreClean here, of course, goes well beyond the technical. We are in the realm of morals. And, of course, who doesn’t want to be righteous? Does anyone of good will want to be responsible for causing harm?
Read MoreNever content with simple answers where complex ones are available (we do have four different new year’s days, after all), the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud (in Qidushin 30a) identify three different midpoints: one midpoint if you count letters, one if you count words, and one if you count verses. One guess as to which of these I care about for this, the one-word Torah project.
Read MoreI am often daunted by the sheer volume of commentary on our sacred texts. Between ancient midrash and modern scholarship, the weight of accumulated words written about Torah is overwhelming. How can I even begin to have my own thoughts until I’ve read everything there is to read first?
Read MoreThis is not the Judaism that haSheim desired. G-d wanted us all to know the workings of the cult, even if we aren’t all qualified to run it — just as we might want everyone in our society to know the workings of the government (both its abstract principles and, via FOIA and related legislation, its specific records and actions) even if we aren’t all qualified to enact new legislation. Judaism is a public affair, for the whole community; the central mechanisms for interacting with G-d aren’t the secret knowledge of a select few.
Read More