Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on October 4, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
this week’s ve’zot ha’bracha, in which moshe blesses each of the tribes individually and makes his final good-byes, marks the closing parsha of our yearly torah cycle. he then hikes up to the top of mount nevo where God shows him the entirety of the land that was once promised to abraham, isaac, and jacob. after Continue Reading »
Posted on October 2, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
the language of parshat ha’azinu seems to be in a poetic world of its own, amidst the torah verses that surround it. a prophetic moshe, nearing the end of both his journey and his life, spews forth a mixture of his own words with God’s in another rage against the people’s disobedience. according to moshe, Continue Reading »
Posted on September 25, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
in this week’s double parsha nitzavim and va’yelech, we edge closer and closer to our separation with moshe and our coming together in the land of israel. as God runs through His final instructions with moshe, He reveals that no sooner than moshe dies and the people enter the land, they are going to sin, Continue Reading »
Posted on September 22, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha is a short one (though on non-leap years it is read in conjunction with the next parsha), that reads more as a concluding statement on all of the activity of last week’s blessings-and-curses-filled parsha than anything else. A number of famous refrains are in this parsha, most notably the idea that the Continue Reading »
Posted on September 20, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
parshat ki tavo, in which God reveals His master plan of divine reward and punishment, is a doozy to read. and by doozy, i mean incredibly difficult and theologically challenging. God unleases a litany of curses that will befall the israelites if they fail to obey the covenant. and lest you think “hey, this curse Continue Reading »
Posted on September 8, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha contains a panoply of laws, customs, and rituals, in no readily ascertainable order. Given the mixed nature of the parsha, a theme is harder to come by than in most weeks. I want to focus on a repeated phrase appearing in connection to a number of the negative commandments that I think Continue Reading »
Posted on September 6, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
parshat ki tetse brims with examples where the men make decisions that crucially impact the women, while their opinions are completely absent from the equation. in fact, their voices have been so successfully silenced, that often unless you were looking for them, you might not even notice they were missing in the first Continue Reading »
Posted on September 6, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
in this week’s parshat shoftim, moshe ensures the people that he will not be the last prophet to walk among them and speak the word of God. rather, God will raise up another prophet to serve as a guide for the people, placing His words in his mouth and acting through him. for forty years, Continue Reading »
Posted on September 6, 2011 by Avi Strausberg
this week’s parshat re’eh teaches a bit of the old mixed with some of the new. the old: don’t worship other gods. this is something pretty fundamental to our covenant with God that we’ve covered several times over in other places of the Torah. however, the bit of the new: don’t worship אלוהים אחרים אשר Continue Reading »
Posted on September 1, 2011 by Barer
This week’s parsha, Shoftim, contains the famous passage extolling justice. “Justice, justice you shall pursue, so that you shall live and inherit the land that Hashem your god has given you.” (16:20, emphasis mine). While this verse is so often quoted as if it contained only the first five words, it is important to note Continue Reading »
