Torah Commentary
Finding Shelter in a Transient World
Sukkot gives us the opportunity to step back and find shelter for our souls, to fill ourselves up from the inside out and reconnect to the highest visions that we have for ourselves. Here are six kinds of shelter we can find when we sit in our sukkahs:
How to Shake a Lulav
Sukkot begins tonight! You've built and decorated a lovely sukkah, but perhaps you're wondering what to do next. Here's a quick guide on how to begin your celebration of the most fragrant and hopsitable Jewish holiday of them all
How to Build a Simple Sukkah
Immediately after Yom Kippur is the time to build your Sukkah, in preparation for Sukkot, which begins this year on Wednesday, October 4 at sundown. This gives you only two more days to build, but don’t worry—a kosher sukkah is supposed to be makeshift and flimsy ...
Praying for Rain
This is what we must go through during the Ten Days to get to the sukkah. We must let the liturgy and the Torah readings break us open. It is a time when we look deep inside ourselves and ask God to reveal any hidden sins in our lives. How have we hardened our hearts towards God or others? We allow the “storm winds” to batter us because we know that it will strengthen us and bring us new life and new growth.
Yom Kippur: Looking forward
Yom Kippur has a solemnity that is strong. The entire Jewish world halts for 25 hours or more, and is engaged in either our prayers and readings in synagogue, or for the more secular, staying at home and ceasing regular activity. Everyone abstains from eating. Only when the shofar sounds to seal Israel’s prayers for the day, does the heavy solemnity lift itself off and away.
The Call to Remember
If you look in Torah you will not see the name for this holiday as Rosh Hashanah. It is called Yom Teruah, or the day of the blasting of the shofar. This is altogether appropriate since the blowing of the shofar, many times over, is the liturgical highlight of the holiday.
Re-Righting Our Stories
" I am now one hundred and twenty years old; I can no longer be active. (Deuteronomy 31:1)"
With that surprising announcement, Moses begins his final address to the children of Israel. ...
Taking Our Place in the Story
The Torah often reads like an epic saga on a par with the Greek myths of Hercules, Perseus or Achilles. The Scriptures are filled with the exploits of larger than life heroes like the courageous Noah, the faithful Abraham, the valiant Joseph.
Love in Action
Our Torah portion this week is full of principles guiding how the people of Israel are to interact with each other in daily, civil life.
Counting the Cost
Shof’tim has dozens of passages of instruction: Don’t worship idols, how courts and kings should behave, the Prophet like Moses, etc. One particular section, Dt. 20:1–9, does not seem that memorable on the surface. It discusses some of the instructions for waging war against the various Canaanite city-states that the Israelites must oust from their Promised Land. Remember, these people are only one generation away from centuries of slavery in Egypt.