O, once again, what a week it has been in the United States of America. I feel so very fortunate to be part of a tradition much older and wiser than the 240-odd years of this nation’s development since its birth. Jews have lived under many forms of government and seen many, many examples ofContinue reading “Shabbat VaYigash: One Person, One Step”
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Shabbat Miketz: Benefit of the Doubt
One of the Jewish ethics presented to us most powerfully by our parashat hashavua, and our week as a community, is this: khaf z’khut, “benefit of the doubt.” It is an important Talmudic teaching, and understood as a vital mitzvah of relationships, that we must always give someone the benefit of the doubt – even going outContinue reading “Shabbat Miketz: Benefit of the Doubt”
Shabbat VaYishlakh: #Dinah Too
A phrase is making the rounds on social media: #Me Too. It refers to women who are sharing their stories of sexual harrassment and abuse. A startlingly powerful wave of reaction is carrying off prominent men, one after the next, with breathtaking rapidity. And some of us watch with an uneasy feeling, wondering: where willContinue reading “Shabbat VaYishlakh: #Dinah Too”
Shabbat VaYetze: Give Me Children Or I Will Die
This week’s parashah finds Jacob leaving home, going to a new community and creating family there. The resonance is obvious here for so many of us, for whom it is natural to expect to create our families and our future in a place different from the one in which we grew up. For Jacob, aContinue reading “Shabbat VaYetze: Give Me Children Or I Will Die”
Shabbat Toldot: Trust, Despite Everything
In parashat Toldot we read of the birth of the twins Esau and Jacob, born to Rebekah and Isaac after years of trying to get pregnant, and much frustration and difficulty. The family that is created when the children are safely born seems to thrive: their parents succeed in helping their boys to find forContinue reading “Shabbat Toldot: Trust, Despite Everything”
Shabbat Hayye Sarah: Mourning the Dead
Once again, gun violence leaves us breathless, and leaves some of us dead. We have reached a point in our nation where, when we see an American flag at half-mast, it is no longer clear to us why. There is so much death around us, so many incidences of murder by gun. And once againContinue reading “Shabbat Hayye Sarah: Mourning the Dead”
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”
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 