Who are we in this moment? This week’s reading of the parasha, Pinchas, drew my attention to the moral and circumstantial duality of our judgment: Pinchas is rewarded with the honor of eternal priesthood for his family for a murder. In today’s world, we cannot relate to this fact. The daughters of Tzelofchad are benefited with their father’s inheritance. They seek Moses who goes to God for consultation. And God finds it fair that they, in the absence of a male heir, receive the inheritance. God thus establishes this law with which we can relate very well today. A sign that our approach to the text of the Torah is tied to our time and our space. A Jew who read this parasha in the year 230, in a closed and macho culture, might have thought the opposite of what we think here today: the rights of the daughters of Tselofchad is an affront and Pinchas got...
A righteous man, blameless was Noah in his generation Genesis is pure poetry. It is to be read countless times and, with each reading, a new layer, a new meaning, is revealed. The density of the book of Genesis is a challenge to matter and physics. As liberal Jews, we extract from the text that takes us beyond what is written there. We take off from literality and take the flight of comprehension and understanding with contemporary times as a backdrop. Parasha Noah is full of important matrices that have both inspired Hollywood epics and are indispensable symbols in our contemporary world. Everything happens in Noah: the regenerating flood on an Earth given over to injustice and corruption; the ruin of the Tower of Babel that generates confusion and misunderstanding; the mention of Abram and Sarai even before they became the patriarch Abraham and the matriarch Sarah; the dove with the olive branch – symbol of Peace on Earth...
