Parshas Yisro – The Barrel’s Secret
Our ancestors’ acceptance of the Torah was imperfect: It included an element of coercion. The Gemara (Shabbos 88a) teaches that “Hashem held the mountain over the Jews’ heads like a gigis (a barrel).” The...
Category: Judaism
Parshas Beshalach — Arms Race
The fundamental struggle of humanity, stripped of all of history’s dross, is between two views: The recognition of a Creator (and the resultant meaningfulness of human life) and the belief that life is the...
Free Speech Isn’t Only A Legal Issue, It’s a Moral One
A thought about free speech, born of Twitter’s cancellation of President Trump’s account, can be read here. Should any Cross-Current readers wish to be on my weekly e-mail list providing links to recent Ami...
Parshas Bo – A Letter from Egypt
Chazal describe the Jewish people as a miracle. Our foremothers, for instance, were physically incapable, the Midrash informs us, of bearing children. Yet, despite the laws of nature, they did. Jewish history, no less,...
Parshas Va’eira – A Partnership of Opposites
Only one of the Ten Plagues visited upon Par’oh and Mitzrayim elicits a declaration of guilt and admission of Hashem’s righteousness from the Egyptian leader.“ This time I have sinned,” Par’oh admits. “Hashem is...
Pathetic Persecutors – parshas Shemos
As the Jewish population in ancient Egypt swelled, the Torah tells us that vayakutzu — The Egyptians “were disgusted” (Shemos 1:12). Rashi explains that “they were disgusted with their [own] lives.” A superficial reading...
Parshas Vayechi – The Real Man in the Moon
In a good example of Talmudic humor, Rav Nachman reacted to Rav Yitzḥak’s recounting of what Rabi Yochanan said, that “Our patriarch Yaakov did not die,” with a wry question: “So was it for...
Parshas Vayigash – Being Pushed, Being Loved
One of the hardest of life’s lessons to learn, a truth born of challenges we all first encounter in childhood but that persist well beyond, is realizing that being shouldered with responsibility needn’t bespeak...
Rabbis Reject Falsification of Orthodox Judaism
The Coalition for Jewish Values released a statement renouncing efforts to identify those who endorse deviance from Torah practices as “Orthodox rabbis.”
Parshas Miketz — Lying Eyes
A botanist named Joseph Banks who was aboard Captain James Cook’s 1770 voyage recorded in his diary that while the 106-foot-long Endeavour sailed along the east coast of Australia, native fishermen totally ignored the...
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