01 Oct 2023

Judaic Topics
Sukkot 5784 Temple Emanu El of Westfield, NJ   We opened our service this morning singing The Byrd’s interpretation of the words of Kohelet – “Turn, Turn, Turn.” There are several reasons given for selecting Kohelet as the special reading on Sukkot. One of them is from a 14th century Spanish commentator called Avudraham. He suggested that the generally downbeat message of Solom...
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04 Sep 2023

Judaic Topics
The Audience is the Issue The portion of the Torah called Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8) is dominated by Moses’s restatement of the blessings and curses found in a different form in Leviticus 26. There, God described the blessings that would accrue to those whose behavior met the required standards and the curses, or rebukes, that would result from a failure to meet those standards. Th...
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26 Apr 2023

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, k...
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09 Apr 2023

Ethics Project
Having published the first major part of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse I am turning back for a while to my Golden Rule ethics project. I reviewed Jeffrey Wattles' book on The Golden Rule, as a first step back into that subject, and I was drawn to the early Christian texts on the subject that he cites. Four major treatments of the Rule were written in 17th century England. I decided to l...
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06 Feb 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
The Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai Solving a Calendar Problem Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai.02.06.23 Introduction: The day on which the Israelites are commanded to observe the festival of Shavuot is one of only ten days marked in the Hebrew text of the bible with the unusual phrase בעצם היום הזה, b’etsem ha’yom ha’zeh. That phrase and the ten days t...
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24 Jan 2023

Judaic Topics
Parashat Va’era 2023: The Names of God   The Hebrew name of the book of Exodus, Sefer Shemot, or the book of Names, gets its title from the names of the sons of Jacob who came to Egypt at the invitation of Joseph. But another issue of names comes up in the first part of Exodus that seems more important. We have already been introduced to Jacob’s family and reciting their names a...
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07 Oct 2022

Ethics Project
I have not posted new "Ethics Project" material on this site for quite a while. I did return to the subject for a teaching prepared for Yom Kippur, which synthesizes the several approaches to a universal ethic. This is the one-page synthesis. Toward An Ethic of Respect And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen 1:27) Y...
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