The Blessing-Commission, the Promised Offspring, and the Toledot Structure of Genesis Jason S
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Noach's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant Mimaamakim We Must
בס"ד קול תורה Parashat Noach 5 Cheshvan 5781 October 23, 2020 Vol. 30 No. 6 Noach’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant “VeAsu Li Mikdash VeShachanti BeTocham,” “And make for me a Mikdash and I will dwell in them” (Shemot By Rabbi Yosef Adler 25:8). Shlomo HaMelech is puzzled as to how HaKadosh Parashat Noach begins with a detailed Baruch Hu can be contained in this world, let alone in a description of the crafting of the Teivah. Its length is to building. However, Chazal state that Hashem engaged be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its in the Middah of Tzimtzum, contraction. He contracts to height thirty cubits. The only other structure which the meet mankind. Similarly, Noah’s ark is designed as a Torah describes in such detail is the Mishkan and its meeting place between man and the divine. utensils. The Aron Kodesh was to be two and a half Nevertheless, it is man here who contracts to meet the cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a divine. half high. An additional comparison exists by the phrase Ideally, it is man who spreads out over the four MiBayit U’MiChutz, from inside and out., which corners of the world and does not limit himself to an describes how these instruments were covered; the Ark. Therefore, Noah’s ark has a door to let people in Teivah with pitch and the Aron Kodesh with gold. Even and out so that this small sample of humanity will soon the word VeChafarta, and you shall cover, is found in populate the entire world. -
The Prophet Jeremiah As Theological Symbol in the Book of Jeremiah╊
Scholars Crossing LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations 11-2010 The Prophet Jeremiah as Theological Symbol in the Book of Jeremiah” Gary E. Yates Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lts_fac_pubs Part of the Biblical Studies Commons, Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, History of Religions of Eastern Origins Commons, History of Religions of Western Origin Commons, Other Religion Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Yates, Gary E., "The Prophet Jeremiah as Theological Symbol in the Book of Jeremiah”" (2010). LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations. 372. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lts_fac_pubs/372 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Crossing. It has been accepted for inclusion in LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of Scholars Crossing. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ETS, Atlanta 2010 “The Prophet Jeremiah as Theological Symbol in the Book of Jeremiah” Gary E. Yates, Ph.D. Introduction Timothy Polk has noted, “Nothing distinguishes the book of Jeremiah from earlier works of prophecy quite so much as the attention it devotes to the person of the prophet and the prominence it accords the prophetic ‘I’, and few things receive more scholarly comment.”1 More than simply providing a biographical or psychological portrait of the prophet, the book presents Jeremiah as a theological symbol who embodies in his person the word of Yahweh and the office of prophet. 2 In fact, the figure of Jeremiah is so central that a theology of the book of Jeremiah “cannot be formulated without taking into account the person of the prophet, as the book presents him.”3 The purpose of this study is to explore how Jeremiah the person functions as a theological symbol and what these motifs contribute to the overall theology of the book of Jeremiah. -
The Humanity of the Talmud: Reading for Ethics in Bavli ʿavoda Zara By
The Humanity of the Talmud: Reading for Ethics in Bavli ʿAvoda Zara By Mira Beth Wasserman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Joint Doctor of Philosophy with Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley in Jewish Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Daniel Boyarin, chair Professor Chana Kronfeld Professor Naomi Seidman Professor Kenneth Bamberger Spring 2014 Abstract The Humanity of the Talmud: Reading for Ethics in Bavli ʿAvoda Zara by Mira Beth Wasserman Joint Doctor of Philosophy with Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley Professor Daniel Boyarin, chair In this dissertation, I argue that there is an ethical dimension to the Babylonian Talmud, and that literary analysis is the approach best suited to uncover it. Paying special attention to the discursive forms of the Talmud, I show how juxtapositions of narrative and legal dialectics cooperate in generating the Talmud's distinctive ethics, which I characterize as an attentiveness to the “exceptional particulars” of life. To demonstrate the features and rewards of a literary approach, I offer a sustained reading of a single tractate from the Babylonian Talmud, ʿAvoda Zara (AZ). AZ and other talmudic discussions about non-Jews offer a rich resource for considerations of ethics because they are centrally concerned with constituting social relationships and with examining aspects of human experience that exceed the domain of Jewish law. AZ investigates what distinguishes Jews from non-Jews, what Jews and non- Jews share in common, and what it means to be a human being. I read AZ as a cohesive literary work unified by the overarching project of examining the place of humanity in the cosmos. -
Notes on Numbers 202 1 Edition Dr
Notes on Numbers 202 1 Edition Dr. Thomas L. Constable TITLE The title the Jews used in their Hebrew Old Testament for this book comes from the fifth word in the book in the Hebrew text, bemidbar: "in the wilderness." This is, of course, appropriate since the Israelites spent most of the time covered in the narrative of Numbers in the wilderness. The English title "Numbers" is a translation of the Greek title Arithmoi. The Septuagint translators chose this title because of the two censuses of the Israelites that Moses recorded at the beginning (chs. 1—4) and toward the end (ch. 26) of the book. These "numberings" of the people took place at the beginning and end of the wilderness wanderings and frame the contents of Numbers. DATE AND WRITER Moses wrote Numbers (cf. Num. 1:1; 33:2; Matt. 8:4; 19:7; Luke 24:44; John 1:45; et al.). He apparently wrote it late in his life, across the Jordan from the Promised Land, on the Plains of Moab.1 Moses evidently died close to 1406 B.C., since the Exodus happened about 1446 B.C. (1 Kings 6:1), the Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years (Num. 32:13), and he died shortly before they entered the Promised Land (Deut. 34:5). There are also a few passages that appear to have been added after Moses' time: 12:3; 21:14-15; and 32:34-42. However, it is impossible to say how much later. 1See the commentaries for fuller discussions of these subjects, e.g., Gordon J. -
Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative
Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative Steven D. Fraade* I imagine that when Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative essay' first reached the editors of the Harvard Law Review, their befuddlement derived not so much from Cover's framing of his review of the 1982 Supreme Court term with a philosophically opaque discussion of the interdependence of law and narrative, but from the illustrations that he drew from biblical and rabbinic texts of ancient and medieval times. For Cover, both intellectually and as a matter of personal commitment, these ancient texts evoke a "nomian world," rooted more in communally shared stories of legal origins and utopian ends than in the brutalities of institutional enforcement, one from which modem legal theory and practice have much to learn and to emulate. Since my own head is buried most often in such ancient texts, rather than in modem courts, I thought it appropriate to reflect, by way of offering more such texts for our consideration, on the long-standing preoccupation with the intersection and interdependency of the discursive modes of law and narrative in Hebrew biblical and rabbinic literature, without, I hope, romanticizing them. Indeed, I wish to demonstrate that what we might think of as a particularly modem tendency to separate law from narrative, has itself an ancient history, and to show how that tendency, while recurrent, was as recurrently resisted from within Jewish tradition. In particular, at those cultural turning points in which laws are extracted or codified from previous narrative settings, I hope to show that they are also renarrativized (or remythologized) so as to address, both ideologically and rhetorically, changed socio-historical settings.2 I will do so through admittedly * Steven D. -
YOUNG ISRAEL of HOLLYWOOD-FT. LAUDERDALE Rabbi Yosef Weinstock, Senior Rabbi Rabbi Adam Frieberg, Assistant Rabbi Rabbi Edward Davis, Rabbi Emeritus Dr
“ YOUNG ISRAEL OF HOLLYWOOD-FT. LAUDERDALE Rabbi Yosef Weinstock, Senior Rabbi Rabbi Adam Frieberg, Assistant Rabbi Rabbi Edward Davis, Rabbi Emeritus Dr. P.J. Goldberg, President 3291 Stirling Road, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33312 954-966-7877 email: [email protected] www.yih.org SHOFTIM 7 ELUL 5778 AUGUST 18, 2018 TORAH READING Deuteronomy 16:18 HAFTORAH Isaiah 51:12 Nach Yomi : Jeremiah 21 Daf Yomi : Menachos 8 SHABBAT TIMES Candle Lighting 7:15 & 7:37 p.m. Shabbat Ends 8:34 p.m. Bat Mitzvah of Shoshana Weinstock. Mazel Tov! Welcome to all newcomers, visitors and guests 2 OUR YIH FAMILY…. Mazel Tov: Shoshana Weinstock upon today’s celebration of her Bat Mitzvah. Mazel Tov to Friday Night Shoshana’s parents Rabbi Yosef & Rebecca Weinstock, grandparents Martin & 7:00pm Minchah/Maariv Main Sanctuary Marsha Schenker and Dr. Alan & Joan Weinstock, and the entire family. Shoshana will deliver a Dvar Torah at the conclusion of the 9:00 a.m. minyan in 7:00pm Sephardic Minchah/Maariv Library the Sanctuary, followed by Kiddush in the Social Hall. 7:15pm & Candle Lighting Rabbi Edward & Meira Davis and Fred & Lori Wittlin on the birth of their 7:37pm granddaughter, Penina Malka, to Gabi & Rena Wittlin. Marci Pachter on the recent marriage of her daughter Jordana to Dr. 7:45pm Minchah/Maariv Beit Midrash David Schmelzer and to David's parents Dr. Victor & Susan Schmelzer of Columbus, Ohio. Shabbat Morning Ari & Cheryl Pearl on their son Mikey’s engagement to Rachelli Goldberg, 7:00am Shacharit Minyan Main Sanctuary daughter of Rabbi Efrem & Yocheved Goldberg of Boca Raton. -
December 2016~Kislev~Tevet 5777
SERVICES SCHEDULE December 2016 Kislev-Tevet 5777 Thursday 1 December Rosh Chodesh Kislev Saturday 17 December Shabbat Vayishlach Service Leaders: Stuart Reuben and Paul Wilton Friday 2 December NB No Pot Luck Dinner Shammos: Terry Haffern Service Leaders: Steve Daniels Torah Reader: Stuart Reuben Shammos: Arthur Berman Torah Portion: Vayishlach Gen 32.4-36:43 (Plaut 217, Hertz 122) Board Rep: Olga Bernstein Haftarah Reader: Dan Cohen Drash: Haftarah Portion: Obadiah 1:1-1:21 (Herz 137) Board Rep: Sarah Livschitz Saturday 3 December Shabbat Toledot Drash: Gillian Merron (Chief Executive from the Board of Deputies, British Jews). Double Bar Mitzvah Noam and Ariel Lazarus Service Leaders: Noam and Ariel Lazarus with Terry Gelbart Friday 23 December Shammos: Chris and Jessamie Milton and Peter Pountney Service Leader: Elena Bloksberg, Jessamie Milton and Harvey Livschitz Torah Readers: Noam and Ariel Lazarus Shammos: Chris Milton Torah Portion: Toledot Genesis 25.19-28.9 (Plaut 173 and Hertz 93) Board Rep: Sally Natan Haftarah Portion: Malachi 1:1-2:7 (Plaut 341 and Hertz 102) Drash: Harvey Livschitz Board Rep: Alistair Kirk Drash: Noam and Ariel Lazarus Saturday 24 December Shabbat Va-Yeshev Service Leaders: Chris Shiller and Jaden Grauman Friday 9 December Pot luck dinner. Please bring vegetarian food, fish or a dessert to share. Shammos: Dan Cohen Service Leaders: B’nei Mishnah Class with Chris Milton. Torah Reader: Jaden Grauman and Adele Miller Hebrew School service. Torah Portion: Vayeshev Gen 37:1-40:23 (Plaut 244, Hertz 141) Shammos: -
Dear Friends, I Have Read Many Portions of the Manuscript, Judaism Reclaimed, by Rabbi Shmuel Phillips
Dear Friends, I have read many portions of the manuscript, Judaism Reclaimed, by Rabbi Shmuel Phillips. The author presents a very thorough and sophisticated discussion of many controversial, philosophical, and theological topics related to the various weekly Torah portions. The material is impressive in its scope and depth and the sheer volume of both Torah and academic sources quoted. I found the discussions fascinating and a source of solid Torah hashkafah. The presentation is many times on a high academic level, yet lucid and easily undersood. I feel that this work can serve as an effective tool to counter the claims of both those that scoff at our mesorah and those that think they can present the mesorah in a distorted and false manner. Although I am not acquainted with Rabbi Phillips personally, he is highly praised by his mentor, HaRav Moshe Rabinowitz, Rosh Kollel of Ohel Esther in Shaarei Chesed, as a serious talmid cha- cham and yerei Shamayim. I commend the author for an important contribution to the strengthening of emunah and mesorah, sorely needed in this generation. May Hashem Yisborach grant him and his family life and health and the wherewithal to continue to benefit the community. Sincerely, With Torah blessings, Rabbi Zev Leff Table of Contents Acknowledgments . XVII CHAPTER 1 | INTRODUCTION The Legitimacy of Philosophical Investigation. 1 CHAPTER 2 | BEREISHIT Eden and Its Implications for Humanity . .10 CHAPTER 3 | BEREISHIT The Relevance of Rambam in Modern ThoughtI. 18 CHAPTER 4 | BEREISHIT The Relevance of Rambam in Modern Thought II . .24 CHAPTER 5 | NOACH From Universal Mission to Chosen Nation . -
Spark, the Tribe Parasha Activity Sheet That Will Help You Bring Judaism to Life in a Varied and Exciting Way
Welcome to Spark, the Tribe Parasha activity sheet that will help you bring Judaism to life in a varied and exciting way. I’d like these activities to enthuse the children and show them how the Torah given almost 3500 years ago is still as relevant and as exciting in our lives today. Thank you for offering to run a Children’s Service, for all the hard work you put into it and for making a real difference to so many young people. The US is very proud of the numerous Children’s Services that are run every week across the UK and this would not happen without you. Spark gives you an overview of the weekly Parasha, songs, an activity, discussion questions or D’var Torah linked to the Parasha or important event that week. Every Children’s Service will be different, in terms of how many participants there are, their age range, its length and the varying abilities of the children. Please read through the document and find the activities that will best suit the needs of your group. It is advisable to read it before Shabbat in case there is some preparation that may be needed in advance. I am sure the children at your shul will benefit from Spark. Please be in touch if you have any queries, feedback or if we can be of any help. Thank you again for the work you do in enabling so many young Jews to access their heritage and traditions in such an exciting way. All it takes is a small spark of interest, to ignite a raging flame of passion for Judaism. -
Matriarchs and Patriarchs Exploring the Spiritual World of Our Biblical Mothers and Fathers
Matriarchs and Patriarchs Exploring the Spiritual World of our Biblical Mothers and Fathers. Biblical heroes, saints and sinners – role models to reflect upon. Sarah, Abel Pann 2 Matriarchs and Patriarchs Exploring the Spiritual World of our Biblical Mothers and Fathers. Biblical heroes, saints and sinners: role models to reflect upon. Elizabeth Young “It is a Tree of Life to all who hold fast to It” (Prov. 3:18) Matriarchs and Patriarchs: Exploring the Spiritual World of our Biblical Mothers and Fathers © Elizabeth Young 2005, Rev. Ed. 2007. All Rights Reserved. Published by Etz Hayim Publishing, Hobart, Tasmania Email: [email protected] This Study Book is made available for biblical study groups, prayer, and meditation. Etz Hayim Publishing retains all publishing rights. No part may be reproduced without written permission from Etz Hayim. Cover illustration: And Sara heard it in the tent door… by Abel Pann (1883-1963) 4 INDEX Abraham: From Seeker to Hasid 7 Sarah: A Woman of Hope 17 Isaac: Our Life is Our Story 35 Rebecca: On being Attentive to God 47 Jacob: Pathways Toward Teshuvah 57 Leah & Rachel: Searching for Meaning 69 6 Louis Glansman Abraham—the Hasid a model of perfect love The Hasid—one who loves God with such a depth of his being so as to ‚arouse a desire within God to let flow the source of his own soul in such a way that cannot be comprehended by the human mind‛ (The Sefat Emet). 7 8 ABRAHAM – FROM SEEKER TO HASID Abraham - from Seeker to Hasid What motivates a seeker? Some considerations. -
Spark2, the Tribe Weekly Parsha Activity Sheet for Children's Service
Welcome to Spark2, the Tribe weekly parsha activity sheet for Children’s Service Leaders across the United Synagogue communities. Thank you for offering to run a service. The US is very proud of the numerous Children’s Services that are run every week across the UK and this would not happen without you. Spark2 gives you an overview of the weekly parsha, a song, activity or Dvar Torah linked to the parsha or important event that week. Every children’s service will be different, in terms of how many participants there are, their age range, its length and the varying abilities of the children. Please read through the document and find the activities that will best suit the needs of your group. It is advisable to read it before Shabbat in case there is some preparation that may be needed in advance. I hope you and the children at your service will benefit from Spark2. Please be in touch if you have any queries, feedback or if I can be of any help. With best wishes, Sharon Radley [email protected] Toldot Parsha Summary After many years of being married, God answered the prayers of Yitzchak and Rivka and she became pregnant with twins. The twins, Yacov and Esav, are born and they are very different. Esav was very hairy and red in colour. Yacov was born holding Esav’s heel. Their personalities were different too; Esav loved to hunt and was a man of the field, Yacov loved to study Torah. Esav came in hungry one day whilst Yacov was cooking a stew. -
TORAH SPARKS Obscure Aspect of Psalm 79
ב׳׳ה (Dvar Torah continued from front page…) In the extended discussion of honor of one’s parents in Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 31b, Rabbi Abbahu recounts the example of Avimi his son. We’re told in the gemara that not only would Avimi run to his father’s call, even though he himself had five ordained sons (grandsons to R. Abbahu). On one occasion Avimi was called by R. Abbahu to bring water to drink. “Before he brought it, Rabbi Abbahu dozed off. Avimi bent over him until he woke up.” It’s a touching moment that leads to the reward of Avimi being able to interpret an TORAH SPARKS obscure aspect of Psalm 79. The language of the gemara to describe the dozing The sense of the word is slumber, Parashat Toledot .נום of Rabbi Abbahu is namnem from the verb drowsy, even to be dying. Perhaps, the gemara hints, Rabbi Abbahu is edging November 30, 2019 | 2 Kislev 5780 towards the liminal world between life and death. And yet we know this verb well Annual | Bereshit 25:19-28:9 ( Etz Hayim p. 146-161; Hertz p. 93-101 ) ( the guardian of Israel does not slumber. Honoring Triennial Bereshit 25:19-26:22 ( Etz Hayim p. 146-151; Hertz p. 93-96 – הנה לא ינום – from Psalm 121 parents is, after all, akin to honoring the Holy Blessed One. Haftarah | Malachi 1:1-2:7 ( Etz Hayim p. 162-165; Hertz p. 102-105 ) “Yitzhak breathed his last and died, he was gathered to his kin, in ripe old age” (Bereshit 35:29) Yitzhak does not die immediately after the incident with his sons in Parashat D’var Torah: On Aging Toledot.