THE TRICK IS: HOW TO scream at the top of your lungs without making a sound. That’s one of the lessons taught by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a Chasidic teacher who lived in Ukraine at the turn of the 19th…
Category: Torah
The Text(s), the tribe, the learning, the being. (With a bit of random spirituality mixed in.)
Two Letters, One Torah
THE FIRST THING YOU NEED to know is that, in Hebrew, the letter D (dalet) looks a lot like the letter R (reish). It’s so easy to confuse the two, in fact, that Source Critics (those who see the Torah…
365 Names of God: El Shaddai
EL SHADDAI is the name used primarily by the Biblical Patriarchs, usually translated as “God Almighty” and focusing on the deity’s providential or nurturing aspect. Scholars differ over whether “Shaddai” is cognate with similar Phoenician or Ugaritic words for mountains,…
The Torah can be taken, among other things, as a ‘polyphonic’ text, or a loose anthology of competing claims regarding the legal stipulations of the covenant. The edited Torah, following this approach, was not meant to be read as a practical and coherent handbook on how to carry out the law, but as a collage of competing understandings of the requirements of the covenant.”
— Rabbi David Frankel
Minute Mitzvah: Saying the Shema
Today: Say the Shema. Explanation: The Shema (“Listen, Israel: יהוה our G?d! יהוה One!”), from Deuteronomy 6:4, is the statement of Jewish faith-commitment. It’s the first prayer we learn after birth and, if we time it right, the last prayer…
Raiders of the Lost Prayer
THE SCENE IS TENSE. RENE Belloq, a French archaeologist hired by the Nazi government (ptoo ptoo ptoo) to steal the Ark of the Covenant in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, is about to open the sacred artifact wherein…
What is “Experiential Holiness?”
SHORT ANSWER: IT’S PART OF the tagline for this blog. Longer answer: it’s a way of seeing and living that recognizes and hopefully honors the interconnectedness of all things, and That which makes them (it?) all possible. “Holiness” is a…
365 Names of God: The Beloved
THE BELOVED is most commonly a Sufi term, but not exclusively so. The idea of God as Lover may be outre to some, but the connotation of passion and all-involvement is a powerful one for many mystics (including the author…
Praying for Strength, and Other Sure Things
IS G?D GRANTING FAVORS, OR am I just fooling my brain into higher functioning? That’s the question I ask myself every time I pray for either greater strength (read: endurance) or greater understanding. That’s about all I ever pray for[1],…
365 Names of God: The Force
THE FORCE is a non-anthropomorphic term, but to a purist like me, so is “God.” It could be argued that since the Force is created by all living beings, rather than the reverse (at least, the reverse from a mythic…
Adventures of a Lidded Yid
“ARE YOU A PRIEST?” ASKED the workman as I passed through a local condoplex. “No, just a Jew,” I answered, smiling. “That’s good,” he said, also smiling, and went back to his repairs. He was not the first person who…
First Graf: Path of the Just
MUSSAR (מוסר) IS A HEBREW TERM usually translated as “ethical behavior/discipline,” or to put it more succinctly, the fine art and science of being a mensch. Its roots are almost as old as Judaism itself — according to Genesius, it’s…