Parshat Ki Tissa: Exodus 30:11-34:35 This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, suggests two poles of leadership, a useful model for election season or any time. The reading begins with a call to order for the entire Israelite enterprise. Everyone is asked to make a contribution of one half-shekel as “enrollment” in the community, a kind of head tax to fund core services represented by the Tent of Meeting. The Tent… Read Article →
All posts by Stephen Hazan Arnoff
“That’s Why I Love Mankind”
Parshat Noah, Genesis 6:9-11:32 It is said that “there is no early or late in the Torah” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Pesachim 6b). In other words, the sacred template of the Hebrew Bible can be reordered so that a phrase from the time of Adam and Eve explains an idea in Jeremiah or vice versa. It also means, if we extend this to the concept of commentary on sacred writ as… Read Article →
Changing the Rules of the Game
It’s no fun playing a game with someone who changes the rules in the middle. We said win by three, right? Well, you can’t go and cut it by a point just because you threw up a clunker that somehow hit the backboard and rattled the rim and put you ahead by two. What’s the point of keeping score at all in a game like that? But when the game… Read Article →
I and I
Jacob’s struggle in this week’s Torah portion is framed by revelations about the meanings embedded in places and names. Nothing surprising there — who gives a name, what that name means and how a place becomes known for the transformative moments occurring upon it, all define much of the biblical story. Vayishlach begins with our hero on the run. Recall that Jacob emerges from his mother Rebekah just moments after… Read Article →
Leviticus: Keeping Holiness Simple
For centuries, formal Jewish study began not with Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, and not with the Mishna, the first codex of lived Jewish law, but with Leviticus, also known as Torat Kohanim, or the Book of Priests. While focusing in many sections, like last week’s portion of Emor, on practices and obligations of the priestly class, Leviticus addresses all Israelites as a “nation of priests” whose… Read Article →