There are many things in our world that we humans feel are not in our control. I often hear about the “market” deciding what to do, even though the stock market is an entity we created and we control. Major issues like poverty, hunger, climate change, war and peace as well as events — like the BP oil spill — seem to be so huge that they are out of our sphere of control.
Korach is a reminder of what happens when division, animosity and fear grab hold of a people. Korach is a reminder of how even the greatest of leaders, Moshe, can be pushed to the limit and almost overthrown, taken down by his own relative, with the very people he saved from slavery now coming to attack him.
Thanks to Dennis Prager for selecting my recent article to illustrate what’s wrong with the Left. It’s great being used as a straw Jew, so Mr. Prager can knock me down.
Raising twins is one of the biggest challenges of my life. As my kids grow (they are now 8 1/2), I have watched them develop different character traits and — being a boy and a girl — different personalities. From an early age, I have tried to instill in them two important qualities, both of which appear in this week\’s parashah, Naso.
As someone who loves to pray, I care deeply about the state of prayer in the American Jewish community. How many of us pray on a regular basis? How many of us are comfortable with Hebrew and are able to participate fully in tefillah (prayer)?
As someone who is uncomfortable with war as a way of solving problems, I always search deep inside myself during the week of Parashat Beshalach, in which we are finally freed from Egypt and leave in a whirlwind of death, destruction and God’s awesome power. According to the Slonimer Rebbe, a wonderful 20th century commentator known for the Netivot Shalom, God needed the plagues and the strong show of force to rouse the people from their slave mentality. Why should the Israelites choose to leave the relative comfort of the status quo — although it is slavery, what’s known is often seen as safer — to follow an unknown, unproven God? God needed a show of force to free our ancestors.
We live in challenging times, to be sure, as conflicts brew all over the globe. Some of these conflicts are old and well-known, like the Arab-Israeli conflict, and some are newer and less well understood, like the American military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Just tell the truth. If you tell the truth, nothing bad will happen to you.” I heard that a lot as a kid. That was code for “you won’t get in trouble.” Now, as a parent, teaching my second-graders about telling the truth is a constant struggle. Children are prone to seeing the world as black and white, right and wrong.
There’s growing buzz in Washington that President Obama will publicly offer a plan for resuming Middle East peace talks at the opening of the UN General Assembly. Coincidentally, the General Assembly falls right in the middle of the High Holy Days, a time when taking steps toward peace in the Middle East will have real resonance for the American Jewish community – a majority of which believes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be the best way to secure Israel’s future.
No catchy intro, no fancy hook this week. We are almost at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We are deep in the month of Elul, the time when we prepare our minds, bodies and souls for the upcoming days of prayer, teshuvah (repentance) and renewal. Now is the moment to ask hard questions, big questions, intense questions and, at times, uncomfortable questions. And we do this work in the shelter of God’s wings, dwelling in God’s holy home; as Psalm 27 reminds us, “Let me dwell in the house of God all the days of my life.” And so, as we read parashat Ki Tavo this week, with its magnanimous breadth of learning, I think that we can see the entirety of the parasha boiling down into a fairly simple, yet profound theme: love conquers fear.