October 2017 – Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone

Shabbat Bereshit: Till It and Tend It

This Shabbat we return to our regularly-scheduled Torah, as it were, after the excitement on Simkhat Torah of reading the very end and the very beginning of the scroll. Moshe Rabbenu, Moses our teacher, dies, and is bewailed, and then the people move on – and we find ourselves, following them, suddenly in a GardenContinue reading “Shabbat Bereshit: Till It and Tend It”

Shabbat of Sukkot 5778: the sukkah as reminder of the wilderness Mishkan

Sukkot begins five days after Yom Kippur. In the maftir Torah readings for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur we have seen (in Numbers 29) a list of the holy days in chronological order, and what sacrifices our ancestors brought to mark each one. Numbers 29.1-6 refers to “the first day of the seventh month,” whichContinue reading “Shabbat of Sukkot 5778: the sukkah as reminder of the wilderness Mishkan”

Yom Kippur 5778: Who Shall I Say Is Calling?

In the late 1990s I had the opportunity to teach Jewish history to Jewish high school students. When we came to the part on anti-Semitism, every student in the class insisted to me they had never experienced anti-Semitism personally. I went around telling adults about it all over Portland’s Jewish community. Oh, yes, they allContinue reading “Yom Kippur 5778: Who Shall I Say Is Calling?”

After Another Tragedy, Remembering Dawn and Mary

Once again we find ourselves silenced by the horrified recognition that once again this has happened, as we all knew that it would happen, again. We who are alive today, who so recently chanted the words “who by fire, who by water,” we once again see that the world we live in is punctuated byContinue reading “After Another Tragedy, Remembering Dawn and Mary”