The grocery store used to be a painful place for my 10-year-old son. He has trouble making decisions when there are too many choices. Hence, when in search of an after-school snack, Ralph\’s became his private, post-modern, market-driven hell. \”Okay Aaron, what\’s it gonna be?\” I\’d ask, with the largess of a dad secure in the knowledge he can afford anything in the store.
Isaac submits without struggle to the twisted leather straps that bind him. He is a helpless partner in this odd dance of death. Abraham reaches for the knife to slit his son\’s throat when mercifully, an angel calls out to stop the slaughter. A ram is to die instead of the boy.
From \”The Extraordinary Nature of Ordinary Things,\” by Rabbi Steven Z. Leder (Behrman House, Inc.)
\”A parent\’s love isn\’t to be paid back; it can only be passed on.\”– Herbert Tarr
Dear Dad,
Tomorrow is Father\’s Day, and we are thousands of miles apart — apart as we are too often and for too long. So it seems a good time to write you and tell you — dear God, what to tell you? How can a son possibly say what a father means to him — how can I say what you mean to me?
We buried her 13 months ago — this flower, this light, this precious partner of his for 60 years. Everything was done in our ancient way: the funeral with its torn, black ribbons and clods of earth thunking on plain pine; the shiva, with its prayers, grief and Bundt cakes; a year of \”Kaddish\” ending with an unveiled marker that captured his love for her in words as terse as Haiku.
The midrash says that poverty is the worst of all afflictions. But I think it\’s something else — loneliness.
Jonathan Kellerman is a child clinical psychologist who, several years ago, embarked on a highly successful career as a mystery novelist.
mes the same thing that got you into trouble can get you out of it. Take for example the fact that in last week\’s Torah portion, our ancestors used their gold jewelry to fashion a golden calf. For this act of idolatry and faithlessness, thousands were killed as God\’s anger poured down upon them like a river of fire.
If Jonathan Kirsch\’s purpose in writing \”Moses: A Life,\” was to offer the reader a mightily researched, comprehensive chronicle of midrashic, scholarly, secular, Christian and even some Muslim commentaries about Moses and the events immediately surrounding his life as told in the Bible, he has succeeded. Anyone seeking explanations for a given period or event related to Moses need simply look to this well-organized volume.
At least there\’s one good thing we can say about Abraham preparing to sacrifice his own son Isaac. When he lifts the gleaming knife above the boy\’s head, an angel calls out: \”Do not harm that child.\” Jews don\’t sacrifice their children. It might have been the norm in pagan societies, but not in our ancestors\’, and not in ours
Shabbat Shuvah usually serves more as a reminder of what we already know about our lives than as a wake-up call to something we have yet to discover — unless there is an entire category of sin, a world of transgression and failure that each of us is guilty of but never considered.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.