Torah Study Blog

This week’s Torah portion is from Leviticus and starts out as, “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments...” and then there is a list of the good things that will happen, including, “you will be fruitful and multiply.” (Leviticus 26:3-9)

Alternately, “if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments” among the horrible things that will befall you is, “You shall eat the flesh of your...Read more...

According to Leviticus 23, on the first full day of Passover (the day after the first night) the Israelites are commanded to bring grain to the Temple, along with a sacrificial offering of a lamb. That counts as Day 1. Then, the Israelites are instructed to count the next 49 days on the calendar and then, “bring an offering of new grain to the Lord.” (Leviticus 23:14)

Today this practice of counting the days after Passover is...Read more...

In the Book of Exodus, God directs Moses to, “bring forward your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests: Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Itamar, the sons of Aaron.” (Exodus 28:1) As the appointed priests, Aaron and his sons had a monopoly on the priesthood, which included the responsibility of making offerings at the altar.

In Leviticus 6 through 9 Aaron and his sons are given the...Read more...

We have spent the last couple of weeks looking at the afterlife. To summarize, we know that the Bible says that, after death, everyone goes to a place called Sheol. Sheol is cold and dark. The people who are there are not there in their bodies but are, instead, a shadowy echo of who they were, and they are referred to as the “shades.” So our loved ones who cross over to the afterlife are not really gone – their shades have gone to...Read more...

In the Book of Job, Job describes what will happen upon his death: “Before I depart – never to return – For the land of deepest gloom; A land whose light is darkness, All gloom and disarray, Whose light is like darkness.” (Job 10:21-22)

Scholars believe the Book of Job was written in the 6th century BCE. But the concept of dying and going to a land of gloom, never to return, has been around a lot longer than that. There is a...Read more...

This week’s session was inspired by Rabbi Jaech’s trip to Washington D.C. with the current Temple Israel of Northern Westchester confirmation class. The trip was organized by the Religious Action Center, or RAC, which falls under the umbrella of the Union for Reform Judaism and acts as their hub for Jewish social-justice work.

In their work, the RAC advocates for issues confronting people today by using the words of our sages. In...Read more...

When it comes to other gods, our God is not messing around! From this week’s Torah portion we are advised that, “Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord alone shall be proscribed.” (Exodus 22:19) In other words, killed! Additionally, we are instructed to, “Make no mention of the name of other gods; they shall not be heard on your lips.” (Exodus 23:13) And Israelites in newly conquered territory, which may have artifacts to...Read more...

To anoint someone means to indicate that person is put in a position of prominence. Today, we might anoint a successor in business. In biblical times if someone was anointed it meant that God had indicated that person will be of importance to the community.

Biblically, when a person is anointed, oil is put on the person. We can imagine that a person who has oil on them appears to have a special glow, or an inner translucence, that...Read more...

Numbers 16 tells the story of a group of Israelites, led by the levite Korah, challenging the authority of Moses and Aaron. Korah says, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” God responded to this challenge by opening the ground beneath Korah and his followers. The people were swallowed by the earth, they fell...Read more...

When the State of Israel was established in 1948, “HaTikva” became the unofficial national anthem. It was not until 2004 that the song became the official anthem of Israel. The lyrics are:

As long as in the heart within,

The Jewish soul yearns,

And toward the eastern edges, onward,

Read more...

The biblical character of Joseph goes through many ordeals in the book of Genesis. The one we looked at last week was when the wife of Potiphar, Joseph’s owner, sexually assaulted Joseph. She claimed it was he who assaulted her, which resulted in Joseph landing in jail. The inspiration for this story comes from an Egyptian story that was recorded in the 12th or 13th century BCE.

The story, known as The Two Brothers, tells the tale...Read more...

The Book of Obadiah is the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible with only 1 chapter containing 21 verses. The book is a prophecy that the people of Edom will be “the least among nations.” (Obadiah 1:1) Why? According to the prophecy, when Judea was destroyed by the Babylonians the people of Edom looked on with glee and gloated. Then the Edomites went in to Judea and looted the wealth of the Jews and slaughtered Jews trying to run away....Read more...

Our Torah portion for this week opens with the words, “The Lord appeared to him (meaning Abraham) … Looking up he saw three men.” (Genesis 18:1-2) Why did Abraham see three men? Over the centuries people have tried to square this incongruence in different ways. Maybe God, like celebrities today, traveled with a posse. Or maybe these were different aspects of God that could not be contained within the image of one man, so he is shown as...Read more...

There are two distinct creation stories in the Torah. The first story says, “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) In this story God created man and woman at one time. In the second, more popular story God created man first, and then woman out of man’s rib.

The second story was likely written first and has echoes of Atra-Hasis, which is a Near...Read more...

This week we were guest-led by rabbi Professor David Sperling.

Professor Sperling is a professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College and he led us in a discussion of the book of Ecclesiastes. In Jewish scholarly circles the book is referred to as Koheleth because it begins by telling us that the words are, fittingly, the words of Koheleth. Some of the words of Koheleth are best known to us today because of the song Turn! Turn! Turn!...Read more...