Rabbi’s Torah Commentary

Last week, we read of the demise of Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu. After the altar’s dedication, they, as young new priests, brought a fire to the altar other than what God had ordered. The Torah never said that it was wrong, only that they died as a result. Mostly, the sages condemn the boys, […]

On the 8th day of the Tabernacle’s dedication ceremony, the priests bring offerings seeking atonement for communal transgressions. The sages argue that the most prescient of these transgressions was the Gold Calf – when Moses was atop Sinai with God for an extended period (40 days), the people began to rebel, thinking he had abandoned […]

We find ourselves in the midst of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The scriptural readings for the holiday period fall outside of the normal Torah cycle, as the sages feel that we should read the texts specific to the holiday, even if out of sequential context. Having just read the Exodus story a few […]

Hotel slogans go out of their way to make sure you know that they will … go out of their way for you. Sheraton asks, “Who’s Taking Care of you?” Of course, the answer is that they want to. Best Western tries to keep up with the more highly rated competition by advertising “Across the […]

“Because the Bible said so!” If I had a dime for every instance that I have heard this line, I would be wealthy beyond words. When in a conversation with someone about scripture, and I hear this phrase, I try to reframe the conversation. In most cases, people are quoting from one English translation or […]

“Roses are red. Violets are blue. I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.” We all have multiple personalities. One shows in this venue, and a completely different one shows in another. I will never forget the day that my oldest (then an early teen) went to a friend’s house. The parents called. They needed to tell […]

Many of you know that, as a rabbi, I sometimes march (ritually speaking) to the beat of a different accordion. I often wonder whether traditional Jewish worship has the capacity to be the spiritual change agent that pushes us to evolve. Maimonides admonished us never to make our prayer a rote practice, and yet, we […]

Tradition teaches us that in understanding Torah, time and arrangement don’t matter. The purpose of the text is to spawn thoughtful conversation. Rabbis will pull texts from different books and read them as if they were written side by side. Where we can learn from the entirety of the text we apply a concept, “Aen […]

I remember the Charlie Brown Halloween special. I always felt bad for him. House after house, adults gave his friends handfuls of candy. As they compared their haul – after each house, he summed his total up, “I got a rock.” Amidst his despair, he finds Sally, who had spent the previous week with Snoopy […]

Watching more than our share of “made for television serials,” we see how people spend episode after episode visiting new lands, meeting new life-forms, realizing that everyone is a stranger, and learning that our ways are not always the best ways (not what we thought at the beginning of the episode). The good guy at […]