WUPJ Library

What a trying period we are passing through! The COVID pandemic has sickened and killed millions ‘round the world, provoking isolation and fear in communities just when we need one another’s concern and encouragement the most.

What does it mean that the earth is God’s? How does that affect our understanding of our responsibility to the earth? And how are we supposed to treat each other if all of the world’s inhabitants also belong to God?

While this week’s Torah portion may engender only modest excitement, even for those who cherish biblical narrative, Emor has a special resonance for me.

For many Jews that must be one of the most recognizable phrases in the Torah. But what does it actually mean? Convention has it that this is an imitatio Dei instruction; having been created in the image of God human beings have to follow God’s example and replicate it in their own society. So far so clear, sort of; but what does ‘being holy’ actually mean?

Why does the Haggadah enjoin us not just to remember but to put ourselves in that place, in that moment in time, and believe ourselves to have been part of it? Doing so can connect us across dimensions of time and space, tying Jewish peoplehood together in this foundational narrative.

Why does the Haggadah enjoin us not just to remember but to put ourselves in that place, in that moment in time, and believe ourselves to have been part of it? Doing so can connect us across dimensions of time and space, tying Jewish peoplehood together in this foundational narrative.

Why does the Haggadah enjoin us not just to remember but to put ourselves in that place, in that moment in time, and believe ourselves to have been part of it? Doing so can connect us across dimensions of time and space, tying Jewish peoplehood together in this foundational narrative.

This Shabbat finds much of the Jewish people simultaneously preparing to greet Shabbat, and making plans and arrangements to clean chametz (specific grains forbidden during Passover) from our homes.

When the request was sent out to WUPJ Rabbis to undertake a commentary on a weekly sidra, within a couple of hours every sidra but one had been taken – This one. I mention this because it is revealing of areas where many Progressive Jews seem to feel uncomfortable or feel perhaps that a specific text has little to say to us of an instructive moral nature.

Jewish history is replete with such inflection points. How do we confront an uncertain future: with fear or with faith?

This week’s Torah portion Tzav צו (Leviticus 6:1-8:36) contains a verse that reads like a crime scene! (…) I can easily imagine Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Cagney & Lacey, Elvis Cole, even Frank and Joe Hardy, approaching this spectacle with surprise and shock. I can hear them consulting with officers on the scene, “you mean, blood is to be found only on the right ears, thumbs, and big toes of the victims?”

In the Jewish world of sacred reflectional reading, this week marks a major transitional period, as we progress onward and forward through the holy pathways of Torah.