Following the Rule of Law
Some of the Torah\’s laws are difficult to comply with. Others are easier. One that certainly belongs in the latter category is the law that prohibits us from engaging in child sacrifice.
Some of the Torah\’s laws are difficult to comply with. Others are easier. One that certainly belongs in the latter category is the law that prohibits us from engaging in child sacrifice.
Write a letter. Address it to those you love — your spouse, your children and grandchild, your friends, your community. Put into this letter what life has taught you: What you learned from childhood, from growing up, from your education. What you learned from marriage and raising children. What you have learned from work, from your triumphs and successes in the world, from your failures and disappointments. What you have learned from the death of loved ones, and the path of mourning and grief. What has life taught you? What is the meaning, the lesson, the wisdom of your life? What is your message?
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.
All of us have observed an event or participated in a conversation only to come away with a perception of what happened that\’s completely different from the interpretations of others.
Be careful when you open your mouth to make a promise, the Torah warns. If you say it, you ought to mean it.
Recently, on a visit to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, I shared an elevator ride with a well-dressed man who was carrying a bulging portfolio under his arm. Wondering what he was doing in the hospital, I inquired about the nature of his visit. He replied that he was a lawyer visiting a client. I was impressed with such compassion and asked, \”Do you visit every client that is in the hospital?\” He immediately explained that this was a rare visit. \”My client called me in great rage. She insisted that I come right over. She wants to change her will before it is too late. The reason for her sudden decision is that yesterday she had a fight with one of her relatives, and her daughter encouraged her to remove that relative\’s name from the will. So here I am.\”
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.
A young woman called, asking if I would be willing to visit with her 95-year-old grandmother. She seemed to be slipping away from life more and more each day, and had been asking to speak with a rabbi.
Let\’s face it. We love the feeling of power. We love it at work, we love it at shul, we even love it at home.
The great rabbi of 16th-century Prague, Rabbi Yehuda Loew, received word of a coming blood libel, an attack on his community.