This week’s Torah reading includes the troubling story of how Moshe performed a miracle to provide water for his thirsty people, and how he was punished for it. But what did Moshe do wrong? Why was he punished for doing more or less what God had commanded him to do? The answer lies in a comparison of this story with a parallel narrative found elsewhere in the Torah.
Recent Posts
Returning is now available online to early reviewers and book bloggers
Returning is a haunting and compelling exploration of the choices we make in a choiceless time, the terrifying strength and burden of the will to survive, and the power of the human spirit to transcend even its own destruction. This book will leave you changed forever.
Writing Tips: Some Notes on Story Structure and Pacing
A good story is a “constructed reality,” and this is no less true of non-fiction than of fiction. Getting this constructed reality from your head into the heads of your readers requires more than just a command of words. Two tools for conveying a sense of reality are structure and pacing. Structure works on the macro level of story, while pacing works on the micro level. Both together serve to carry the reader smoothly through the story like a whitewater rafter who has lost his paddle, and must trust you to get him safely through the rough bits.
Jewish Thought
Weapons & Norms: an Israeli perspective on U.S. gun violence
We in Israel live in a country with wars raging on all sides, with failed states collapsing into a primordial stew of hatred and nihilism all around us, with suicidal regimes seeking nuclear weapons in order to carry out their expressed goals of obliterating us. We know about death and we know about weapons of war, but we don’t fetishize them. How is it that Americans are so willing to arm the enemy within for the sake of security?
The Law of the King: individual commandment or national constitution?
The Law of the King, in the Book of Deuteronomy sets out the rules for a constitutional monarchy for the nation of Israel. For over a thousand years, kings were judged by how well they followed its precepts. But in the writings of the later prophets, the Law of the King became a signpost to a political and economic revolution.
Truth, Compromise, and Meta-Halakhah
The Talmud manages to do what few legal systems even attempt: it integrates psychological and moral issues seamlessly with normative legal guidelines. But to appreciate the full extent of this integration, it’s important to pay attention to something that is too often left out of today’s Gemara classes: the aggadah.
Parashat HaShavua
Parashat BeHar: Social justice as holiness
The mitzvot of Shmittah and Yovel set out a complete program of social and religious life that encompasses respect for others, for the the land, and for God. Israel’s right to live in peace and prosperity in its own land is conditional on its building a model society, which provides a safety blanket for its weakest members. We aren’t just told to have compassion on those who are down on their luck; we are legally mandated to act toward them as we would toward our closest family.
Parashat Yitro: Covenant and Peoplehood
The receiving of the Torah marks the official incorporation of Am Yisrael—the final step in the transition from disparate individuals with a common kinship and history into a people, bound to each other by irrevocable decree. And yet, there is some question of whether the Covenant was a voluntary agreement.
Parashat VaYigash: history and transformation
In our parasha, we first hear Ya’akov’s sons referred to as “Bnei Yisrael”—the sons of Israel, rather than “Yoseph’s brothers”. While Yoseph’s brothers may make individual choices and mistakes and Ya’akov’s sons may decide for the family, it is Bnei Yisrael who represent the entire Jewish nation—past, present, and future. It is by that designation that they take their first step into what will soon become Egyptian slavery and subsequent nationhood. What brings about this first nominal hint of history in the making? To answer that, we need to go back two parshiot, to the incident of Tamar and Yehuda.
Book Reviews
Book Musings – The Body of Faith: God in the People Israel by Michael Wyschogrod
What does it mean when we say that human beings were created “in the image of God”. While some of the foremost Jewish philosophers, in particular the Rambam, saw Tselem Elohim as referring to the human capacity of reason, Michael Wyschogrod disagrees. His ideas tally in surprising ways with modern neuroscience.
Book Snippet: The Prophetic Faith
Among the books I’ll be using for the discussions in Havrutah with a One-Eyed Cat is Martin Buber’s The Prophetic Faith. Buber speaks of the relationship between prophecy and free choice. As he makes clear, individuals, civilizations, and species all hang by the thread of a decision by one person. And that one person is all of us.
Eliezer Berkovits on Halakhic truth in a world of uncertainty
As I make my way through the stack of books that will go into the writing of my next book, probably the one that I return to most is Eliezer Berkovits’ classic Not in Heaven. Rabbi Berkovits argues for the application of human reason in deciding Halakhah, but not for the reasons commonly believed!
Havruta with a One-Eyed Cat
Credit, Hope, and the Law of Conservation of Good
What does extending credit have to do with the evolution of sentient life? And what does either concept have to do with karma and conservation laws? The answer depends on whether your interlocutor is a cat.
Of Property Law & Mortality: Pixel on Bava Batra 29a
With a single line of commentary, a discussion in the Talmud about property law suddenly becomes a glimpse into time, eternity, and mortality. And what better discussion partner for such things than a cat?
Pessachim 10a and Quantum Uncertainty
Pessachim 10a deals with questions of doubt and the limitations of knowledge. Trust a one-eyed cat to explain how these questions are answered by quantum mechanics.
