Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

In the realm of biology and chemistry, interactions lead to further interactions, as the energy of one unit creates the response of the next, which in turn launches yet another process. Everything is connected, and everything is part of a series of responses and influences. What goes around comes around. Read more...

These are trying times for Jews and for Judaism.  Feeling as though our abuse at the hands of hateful non-Jews will never end, there is an urge to take care of our own, to focus exclusively on Jewish interests and Jewish priorities. Read more...

Shavuot, the Festival celebrating God’s revelation of Torah, has become one of Judaism’s hidden jewels. Far more Jews observe Yom Kippur or the Seder than stay up late to learn at a Tikkun Leil Shavuot. What makes this relative obscurity all the more unfortunate is that the notion of God giving the Torah to the Jewish people is at the center of Judaism in every age, and remains so in every contemporary expression of Jewish religion. Read more...

Puritan and colonial America viewed themselves as the modern embodiment of ancient Israel.  Like the Israelites, they saw themselves as fleeing from an oppressive Pharaoh, journeying into the wilderness in pursuit of freedom and the establishment of a religious and democratic society.  No coincidence, then, that on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the Hebrew Bible proclaims its ancient ideal. "Proclaim liberty throughout the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof."    Read more...

As modern people accustomed to worship through prayer, study and through the performance of loving deeds, we are repelled and shocked by the notion of serving God by killing animals.  Yet,  most people throughout the ancient world, and in many contemporary communities as well, worshipped by  providing offerings of animal or human flesh,  as though God would eat.   Read more...