Holy Chutzpah: When Moses Pushes Back
Moses in Numbers 14 doesn’t just beg; he practices what we might call holy chutzpah—a bold, risky way of speaking to God that almost looks like forcing God’s hand […]
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Opening the Door, Guarding the Core: Non‑Jews at the Seder
On Pesach night, we sit at a table without a Temple, without a lamb on the fire, but with a Haggadah in our hands and an open door in […]
Birkat Kohanim: The Bridge to Holiness
Parashat Nasso is famously long and, at first glance, a little disjointed. We move from the census of the Levites, to laws of interpersonal wrongs and restitution, to the […]
Out of Sync, Still Together: Why Israel and the Diaspora Read Different Parashot
Every Shabbat, communities around the world read a fixed section of the Torah, the parashat ha‑shavua. Over the course of the year, that cycle lets us “walk” through the […]
Why Do We Eat Dairy Foods on Shavuot?
The custom to eat dairy on Shavuot is widely observed, but it is rooted in serious halakhic and symbolic ideas, not just in our love of cheesecake. The classic halakhic […]
Bamidbar: Turning Numbers into a Nation
The English name of the fourth book of the Torah, “Numbers,” suggests a dry accounting project: lists, totals, statistics. In Hebrew, though, the book is called Bamidbar—“In the Wilderness”—a […]
God’s Calendar, Our Lives: Why the Torah Repeats the Holidays Again and Again
Many of us secretly wish the Torah were a little more concise. Why repeat the same lists over and over? Yet when it comes to the holidays, the Torah […]
From Isolation to Return: Tazria & Metzora and the Path Home
Tazria–Metzora is one of the hardest portions in the Torah to relate to our lives. It deals with strange skin afflictions, bodily processes, and a complex system of purity […]
Holy Eating: What ‘Kadosh’ Really Means
This week’s Parasha, Shmini, describes one of the most intimate ways God shapes a people: not only through revelation at the entrance to the Mishkan, but also through the […]
From Exodus to Altar: The Journey of Matza
On Pesach, matza is the bread of being taken out of Egypt; in Leviticus, matza is the bread of coming close to God. The same simple, unleavened bread quietly […]