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Rabbi's Torah
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Rabbi Marc Kline’s thoughts and views on this week’s Parashah!
Biblical teachers point to the Bible’s poetry as being symbolic of its artistry. At the same time, these same teachers argue that nothing happens in the text by accident: everything has a meaning. When it comes to texts of “poetic symmetry,” one stands at the crossroads. It is certainly possible that the value of the […]
At the end of this week’s portion, Israel finds itself in a moment of “déjà vu.” Forty years earlier, they stood near Jericho and had access to the “Promised Land.” They sent spies in to investigate the land, to see if it was all that God had promised. It was; it flowed with the most […]
This week’s Torah portion gives us the story of a challenge to Moses’ authority. Korach (also a Levite) argues that all power and control should never centralize in one or two people. According to the Torah, the whole Levitical tribe was supposed to share in service to God. As it stands in the Torah’s story, […]
Aristotle taught us that, in terms of “potential,” there are two realities. Here is the abridged explanation. The first (and primary) reality exists within a being’s natural potential. The second reality is what intervening forces can make it become. Aristotle referred to this potential as an actualized potential. We speak of acorns as though they […]
Having faith requires a belief in prophecy. Yes, this is a bold statement. I did not say that faith required a belief in specific Prophets or Biblical inerrancy or even any definition of God. No, having faith requires that one believes in prophecy. Prophecy has nothing to do with predicting the future; it serves as […]
The first time I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau it was snowing. The scholar I was traveling with instructed us, “When you get off this bus, let your imagination go wild. You will never be able to fathom the horrors that happened here.” As I got off the bus, snowflakes touched my face. I like a little […]
Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook cautioned regarding the moral and spiritual dangers inherent in political life: “We must not allow the tendency toward factionalism, which threatens most strongly at the inception of a political movement, to deter us from seeking justice and truth, from loving all of humanity, both the collective and the individual, from love […]
“But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever […]
When approaching a religious ceremony, two schools of thought do battle. One argues that if you do the ritual and make it a habit, you will come to understand the value of the ritual. The “doing” creates and/or fosters the “understanding.” The other school argues that one must sense value in doing before participating or […]
My tradition teaches that there is no special task or rite in the religion that only a Rabbi can perform. We have made a profession out of the Jewish clergy (Rabbi and Cantor), but that is more to facilitate the operations of a synagogue in a world where our normal lives take us all over […]