Mah Nishtana HaShana Hazot? This is not a year like all of the others. But it’s not as though we’ve never seen it. This configuration of the calendar happens roughly 11% of the time, but in the last 31 years, it’s happened six times. It occurred only once in the 80s and once in the 90s. But they can come in clusters, and there can be a long gap. The gap after this year is 20...Read more...
We had a guest scholar giving the Derasha last week, which meant that I did not begin by marking the 31st time I’ve been here for Parashat Para. As it happened, the way things went that year, I also spoke on Parashat HaChodesh. I returned a week later at the request of the search committee. That was, as it turned out, a much more dramatic weekend than the one before, a sign that EB would never lack for...Read more...
When one begins this Parasha, one can barely suppress the urge to quote, “And now for something completely different.” Architecture. Interior design. Artisans. All well and good, but we were just at the foot of the mountain, following a story which obviously reached its peak. Everything from Avraham Avinu ends with that scene at the mountain, first at the foot and then with Moshe Rabenu climbing...Read more...
Even in the Shabbat Zmirot which commemorate the giving of the Torah, one phrase comes to represent the whole experience: “Na’ase V’nishma” (we will do and we will hear). A rabbi in Israel once called Na’ase V’Nishma the most famous phrase that wasn’t said. Not that it doesn’t appear in the Torah but that it’s not where anyone would look for it. If you asked a group, they’ll probably tell you...Read more...
