#Torah commentary

[jewish-joy]

Me, at our torah book club- I really love this passage where Esau and Jacob make tentative peace. It's my favorite, maybe after Isaac and Ishmael burying their father together. Ah, that's such a toss-up.

Rav David, off the cuff- Hmm. Into all the parts about familial dysfunction, aren't you?

Me, who's just been read for filth in front of 10 other people- Listen-

[penguicorns-are-cool]

I'm pretty sure Avraham failed the test

like if I was given a test and the person giving the test very obviously told me that I was wrong and not to actually do the thing, I would assume I failed the test

also, that's about where the torah switches focus from Avraham to Yitzchak. There were no more tests after that, his story just kind of ends. His next big task is to just marry off his son and that's it he's done.

Like, I really don't think he passed that test I think he failed for refusing to question God for giving him a very unreasonable task.

And it's not like others haven't been rewarded for questioning or even fighting authority

like Yaakov is very definitely rewarding for tricking his Dad cause like right after it says he has a dream where God basically told him good job you will have many descendents. Then later on he literally fights an angel and it's a good thing cause he got renamed Israel as part of a blessing and now we're B'nei Israel

And Moshe definitely questioned authority that was like his whole thing. And even beyond Pharoah, he also had to reason with God to get them to not kill everyone.

Even Avraham that time he convinces God to not kill everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah if there are ten good people. There aren't but Avraham's questioning and reasoning with God is portrayed as a good thing.

Also, Judaism is generally very supportive of questioning authority and child sacrifices are very specifically banned in the torah, so It makes no sense that Avraham passed the test because he would've obeyed God even to kill his child. Like that moral is pretty inconsistent with the rest of the Torah.

so I definitely think Avraham failed that test.

[insane-control-room]

as i was reading through the parshiot in relation to adar and purim to prep for a little dvar tora/shiur, i was struck by a fascinating thought. my ancestor, Aharon haKohen, had erred in a unique manner. when the 'rabble' came onto him and demanded the golden calf, he, after witnessing his nephew Chur ben Miriam and Kaliev get killed by the mob for standing against the rebellion, thought wisely to distract the people and agreed to their plan in creating the idol. and yet, he was later punished for this discretion with the deaths of his sons, Nadav and Avihu, for saying 'lest b'nai yisrael transgress by killing a prophet and a kohen in one day' (which he and his sons were). Aharon avi haKohen's trait was that of peace seeking, and yet, this populace came upon him to ensue strife and discord, pressing on his kindhearted, peace loving nature to essentially force him into a role that ultimately caused the jewish people's spiritual (and physical) downfall.

it struck a chord with me, as i see jews swayed to their own destruction in the name of a false form of peace. in order for true peace and sanctity to be achieved, one must stand by their values, and refuse to bow to arguments made in desperation, fear, distortion, or manipulation. in spite of the 'rabble' and the desecration wrought from within, we jews overcome and withstand. only through education, perseverance, and true efforts for peace can tranquility be obtained.

shavua tov l'kulam, and may HaShem bring us peace readily within our days!

[nonstandardrepertoire]

Parashat Tərumah: כַּפֹּֽרֶת | kapóret

Both the lid and the curtain separate and contain. But there is a key difference: On occasion — once a year on Yom Kipur, in fact — the High Priest can pass thru the curtain; at no point is anyone ever to remove the lid from the Covenant Ark. One is slightly permeable, the other is permanently sealed. What does this teach us about atonement?

A slightly unusual one this week in that I’m not going to be citing a specific verse, but rather a word that shows up in multiple verses in this parashah: כַּפֹּֽרֶת | kapóret, a word that refers to the lid of the Covenant Ark. As far as we can tell, kapóret isn’t a generic term for a lid that goes on a box, instead, it’s a technical term for this covering and this covering alone. Etymologically, kapóret comes transparently from the root כפר | KPR, which generally refers to atonement or the clearing away of sin. It’s the exact same root that gives us Yom Kipur.

I am always a little hesitant to put much weight on etymology when it comes to explaining technical terms. Jargon has a way of tying terms to meanings by the most tangential relations, and those terms tend to stick even when they make very little sense. In music, the field I know best, a piano is not a quiet instrument (despite what its name might suggest), an Italian augmented sixth chord has no discernible historical connection to Italy, and altos (literally “high ones”) aren’t the highest vocal part in a standard vocal ensemble. It’s sometimes possible to explain these names historically (tho, again, some of them really are flummoxingly inexplicable), but there’s no way to reverse-engineer those explanations from the words themselves.

Still, the etymological connection here is suggestive. The most direct explanation may be that the kapóret is where the High Priest would sprinkle the atonement blood on Yom Kipur — not so much a lid as an atonementizer. But I think there’s a teaching for us here as well.

In particular, I’m struck by the similarity of kapóret to another technical term in this parashah: פָּרֹֽכֶת | parókhet, the curtain that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Mishkan. The words are almost identical, the same four consonants in only a slightly different order, all but the same vowels. What are we to learn from the juxtaposition of these words?

Both the lid and the curtain separate and contain. But there is a key difference: On occasion — once a year on Yom Kipur, in fact — the High Priest can pass thru the curtain; at no point is anyone ever to remove the lid from the Covenant Ark. One is slightly permeable, the other is permanently sealed.

What does this teach us about atonement?

There is a state of affairs that, at first blush, looks an awful lot like atonement. When one person wrongs another, it is common for the two of them to never speak of it, to never address the harm directly, to carry on as tho the harm had never been done, not because the harm has been healed but instead because letting it fester in the background is easier than the fraught work of apology. Perhaps you have even experienced this yourself.

As I said, at first blush, this might look like atonement. But unaddressed, these things tend to accumulate, repeated little incidents amplifying each other towards a ruinous breaking point. The parókhet might seem like a kapóret, but it is not quite: The miasma of sin can still seep thru it and contaminate the holiest space. Harm suppressed is not atonement.

The work of atonement requires piercing that veil. It requires the risky, terrifying work of going inwards, digging up feelings of hurt and sitting with them, figuring out what went wrong, what can be done to make it right, and what can be done to prevent future failings on the same lines. And then, crucially, the matter must be laid to rest. It cannot be atonement if the same incident is going to be relitigated again and again. That’s a curtain, not a lid — once the Tablets go into the Ark, the kapóret goes on, and it doesn’t come off again. If it were permeable, it would be a parókhet, and that’s no good.

This work, tho difficult, is uttmostly Holy. The very Divine Presence of G-d manifests in the Holy of Holies in the heart of the holy meeting tent directly on top of the kapóret. Atonement, when we can reach it, is the foundation that allows G-d’s presence to enter the world.

[This has been an installment of one-word Torah. You can read the full series here.]

[dogmalilith]

The shape of the Vav is a straight line that represents a person standing upright. It represents balance, consistency, and the middle path. Because it means "hook" and "and," it represents the power that links all souls together and the force of connection between the Divine "sparks" that permeate reality.

Other important sixes in Judaism include the six days of creation, the six dimensions of the physical world, the six orders of the Misha, the six points on a Jewish star, and the six cubit size of the Tablets of the covenant.

#MyJewishLearning

[chavasjewishscrapbook]

In this week’s parasha, the Israelites are in a liminal place. Lead by leaders they barely know, recognizing in one moment tremendous miracles being done for them and in the next worried about their ability to sustain themselves, manna is a beautifully complex response. The more the Israelites experience a felt sense of nourishment — physically leaving their tents, going out, gathering the manna from the earth itself, eating it, feeding their households — the more they understand on a foundational and emotional level, beyond the intellect, that they will make it, they will be okay. It’s not enough to be given promises or even flashy miracles. They have to experience it, in small ways, every day.

When we feel a sense of destabilization in our own bones, as our ancestors did, we too have to slow down and intentionally take in all that surrounds us that is nourishing, supportive, even when the world around us is replete with tremendous challenge.

--My Jewish Learning commentary on Parashat Beshalach

Nourishing myself is something I need to get better at -- holistically. And Shabbat is a good way to begin, I think. I find the rest of Shabbat essential -- but I've not been able to be observant for a while due to my theatre commitments. Something to reflect on.

Shabbat shalom, jumblr.

[davidjjackson]

Sitting under a fig tree?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee (John 1:48)

(Q) What was Nathanael doing?

(A) Studying the Torah.

[dogmalilith]

Cain and Abel are biblical figures in the Book of Genesis which is part of the Jewish Torah. They were the first two sons of Adam and Eve, and the first pair of siblings described in the Torah.

It appears in Bereshit, the first of the 54 Torah portions.

#MyJewishLearning

does anybody want to play rocks with me

[girlactionfigure]

[notaplaceofhonour]

my posts about antisemitism are NOT an invitation to crawl into my mentions to be islamophobic

[nonstandardrepertoire]

Parashat Yitro: אָנֹכִי | anokhi

I sometimes try to imagine myself at scale, fitting myself in to the largest space I can comprehend. I’ll start with holding the entire room I’m in in my head, then the entire building, then the street, the neighborhood, the city, stretching my awareness out and out to the nearest coastline, the nearest ocean, the great grand curvature of the Earth. I usually cannot get very far before my head starts swimming, before the smallness of me and the hugeness of this so so tiny planet overwhelm me and splay me out like so much insubstantial nothing.

[A short one this week, and probably again for the next few weeks. If you know, you know.]

In Shəmot 20:15, we read: וַיַּֽרְא הָעָם וַיָּנֻֽעוּ וַיַּעַמְדוּ מֵרָחֹק | vayár ha’am vayanú’u vaya’amdu meiraḥoq | “the people feared and wavered and stood at a distance” during the theophany at Sinai.

One might ask: How much of the theophany did they actually experience before pulling back from the mountain?

Rabbi Naftali Zvi Horowitz of Ropshitz (1760–1827) says that his teacher, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rimanov (1745–1815), suggested שֶׁאֶפְשַׁר שֶׁלֹּא שָׁמַֽעְנוּ מִפִּי הַקָּדֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא רַק אוֹ�� א דְּאָנֹכִי | she’efshar shelo shamánu mipi haqadosh barukh hu raq ot alef də’anokhi | “that we [a] heard nothing from the mouth of the Holy Blessed One other than the letter alef of ‘anokhi’ [the first word of the first commandment]” [b].

[a] I have not spent a lot of time with this text, but I assume that R' Horowitz writes “we” instead of “they” here in reference to the tradition that every Jew who ever was or will be was at Sinai — that Torah was revealed to all of us in all times, not just the generation of the Exodus. [b] I am not 100% sure how to cite this text properly. On Sefaria, it’s included as section 13 of the Shavu’ot chapter of the Festival part of Zera Kodesh, but I’ve seen other people cite it more simply as “Zera Kodesh 2.40”. Hopefully that’s enough for you to track down the original if you want to.

Alef is a glottal stop; it makes no noise. It is the absence of noise, the cessation of breath. How can one hear this?

We read earlier in Shəmot 20:15: וְכׇל־הָעָם רֹאִים אֶת־הַקּוֹלֹת | vəkhol ha’am ro’im et haqolot | “And all the people see the thunder” — from this we know revelation is a moment where the senses commingle, where hearing and seeing and otherwise experiencing are not necessarily distinguished.

We know from Bəreishit 1:2 that before there can be creation, G-d’s breath must be free to move, to blow across the primordial waters, to carve out the small cosmological bubble in which all earthly life exists. We know from the blessing for morning light that creation is never complete, that it is renewed daily by constant action from G-d. When G-d’s breath is interrupted, creation unbecomes.

Alef, in gematria, has a value of one. At Sinai, we heard this alef; we experienced one. And not just any one, but the absolute, all-encompassing One of G-d. We were, for the flick of a glottis, united wholly with G-d, experiencing and being simultaneously all things, all places, all times.

I sometimes try to imagine myself at scale, fitting myself in to the largest space I can comprehend. I’ll start with holding the entire room I’m in in my head, then the entire building, then the street, the neighborhood, the city, stretching my awareness out and out to the nearest coastline, the nearest ocean, the great grand curvature of the Earth. I usually cannot get very far before my head starts swimming, before the smallness of me and the hugeness of this so so tiny planet overwhelm me and splay me out like so much insubstantial nothing.

Imagine doing this with the whole entire universe.

To lose all distinctions between self and not-self is a form of oblivion, a kind of death. A human cannot interface with G-d directly and survive. No wonder we begged for Mosheh to bear the terrible burden of being plunged into this incomprehensible unity in our stead.

Revelation is at hand, but who can stand to receive it?

[This has been an installment of One-Word Torah. You can read the full series here.]

[dogmalilith]

Ragman (1991) is an eight issue mini series that incorporates jewish mythology with a hero. He is one of a limited number of Jewish superheroes, and his continuity is tied to that of the Golem. Ragman is sometimes compared to the other nighttime defender of Gotham City, Batman, and was a member of the Sentinels of Magic and Shadowpact.

[judaismandsuch]

A Brilliant Biblical Commentary that I can't Believe

Now, as many of you may know Humanity/ Man is Created twice in Breishit (Genisis) the First time in Breishit 1:27: "And G-d created man in His image....male and female He Created them."

The Second time in Breishit 2:7, and finished in 2:22: "...[G-d] formed man from the dust of the earth.....and Man became a living being." "[HaShem] fashioned the rib He took from man into a woman." (obv a bunch of stuff happens between verse 7 and 22).

Now important notes: 1)There is a lot of established commentary on all of this, but that means there is too much to succinctly summaries other views, so if you are curious about the established interpretations for all this look it up yourself. 2) All the garden of Eden stuff is a cohesive story in chapter 2-3, not mentioned at all in relation to the first creation.

Anyways there is a lot of explanation and reconciiation of these verses, as it is troubling the HaShem would describe the creation of humanity twice, and the stories be very different. There are answers, brilliant ones, bad ones, etc. But I believe I am the first to have this response.

So... it is indeed troubling, until you look a few chapters later, specifically chapter 6.

Now between chapter 2 and 6 a bunch of stuff happens: The garden of Eden, Cain and Abel. Cain taking a wife. The First city builder, the first smiths, the first tent dwellers (more accuaretly the specific ancestor of those, but w/e). The descendents of Cain and Seth, the subtle decrease in life span, etc.

Now aside from the general "Wow this is bullshit, it human civilization didn't progress in that manner." or "Humanity never had a lifespan that long!" Bad faith arguments, you run into an issue.

Who the fuck are they marrying? Hell, it's implied that there are other humans around when Cain kills Abel, where did those guys come from?

Again, loads of commentary but here we are going to my tying all this together:

Chapter 6: The Children of G-d and the Nephilim. 6:2: "The children of G-d saw how beautiful the daughters of Man (or humanity) were, and took wives from among those that pleased them." 6:4:"It was then that the Nephilim (lit. the fallen) appeared on earth when the children of G-d cohabited with the daughters of Man who bore them offspring, they were the Heroes of Old, Men of Great renown."

Now, this has it's own issues, mainly: What the fuck? Who are the children of G-d? Who are the fallen (Nephilim)? And who the hell are the Heroes of Old?

Again, loads of answers for all that already. (BTW, in Numbers/Bamidbar 13:33 Nephilim are mentioned again. by the spies, who use the word to mean 'giant', since that is a quotation of a human speaking, whereas this is not, I can safely ignore "Nephilim means giant" in my exegesis).

Now my commentary (though clever you, you may have already put it together!)

We already have fallen children of G-d mentioned: Adam and Eve. Them getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden can definitely be considered 'Falling'.

And if we consider that there were two separate 'Humans' those in the Garden (Adam and Eve), and those outside from chapter one, we get the answer to who Cain and Seth are marrying.

And then, from Adam's line we get a list of Great Humans: The City Builder, The Smith, The Musician. They could definitely be considered the heroes of old.

Are there issues with this explanation? A couple, none (scripturally) too challenging. Is this explanation original? As far as I know: Yes. But that may just mean my research is garbage.

But the biggest problem with this explanation?

It DEMANDS a fully literal acceptance of that portion of Breishit. If HaShem intended for it to be metaphorical, or a pat explanation b/c creation wasn't important, why would there be an interlock of the two stories?

There wouldn't be.

And I am NOT a (full) biblical literalist. (I do believe that one has to be within a small margin of error a biblical literalist from Avraham to the end of the Torah for Judaism to have validity).

So I have this beautiful, pat, explanation that I can't believe.

Terribly Annoying.

[just-about-nothing]

really funny commentaries on today's portion -- highlights include joseph being extremely passive aggressive towards his brothers like five different times & israel kvetching, in the best of our people's traditions, about his hard-knock life to the king of egypt.

[shirahchante]

Walking the Path of Ancient Laws in Modern Times

I’m excited to connect with you today as we get into some fascinating insights from the Torah portion, Mishpatim as featured on my podcast, Perfect Body. While exploring the deeper connections between spirituality and self-discovery. Let’s take this journey together.  Exploring the Perfect Body Within  First, let me remind you that you are perfectly made by God. Let that sink in. As we journey…