Torah Study Blog

In the Torah, Cyrus the Great of Persia is referred to as the “anointed one” (Isaiah 45:1). In 539 BCE Cyrus defeated the Babylonians, who had exiled the Israelite leaders, and invited the leaders to come home to Jerusalem. Cyrus allowed the Israelites to worship their god and to make their own laws to govern their people. In return, Cyrus required loyalty from the Israelites, and the payment of taxes.

Although the Israelites were...Read more...

The Torah portion for this week included one line in particular that caught Rabbi Jaech’s eye. Exodus 22:17 says, “You shall not tolerate a sorceress.” The word translated here as sorceress could also be translated as witch, and it definitely indicates a female.

The Torah has several references to the workings of witchcraft or sorcery. Isaiah 47:12 condemns the Babylonian witches by saying, “Stand up, with your spells and your...Read more...

Part of the Torah portion for this week from the book of Exodus describes the Passover meal: “Speak to the whole community of Israel and say that on the tenth of this month each of them shall take a lamb to a family, a lamb to a household. But if the household is too small for a lamb, let him share one with a neighbor who dwells nearby ... Your lamb shall be without blemish, a yearling male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goat....Read more...

The Torah portion for this week introduces us to the character Moses. The story is that the Israelites had become so numerous in Egypt that pharaoh became concerned that the Israelites would outnumber the Egyptians. Pharaoh decreed that every newborn boy should be thrown into the Nile River.

Although the biological mother of Moses is named in other traditions, in the story in Exodus Moses’s mother and father remained unnamed. The...Read more...

In 722 BCE, the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians. The defeat resulted in what is popularly known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The Assyrian nation had a policy of forced relocation of the defeated citizens. That reality is reflected in one of the traditions in our own Bible.

The story in 2 Kings 17 is that all the Israelites were deported from their homeland and forced to resettle in Assyria. Then, the king of...Read more...

As of a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, Christians make up 31% of the Earth’s population, and 70% of the American population. A large portion of those people consider the words in the Bible to be sacred. Rabbi Jaech pointed out to us that the people who wrote the biblical stories had no idea that the material would come to be considered sacred. If they had realized the impact these words would have, perhaps they would have...Read more...

Last week we learned that our patriarch, Jacob, with the help of his mother, had cheated his twin brother, Esau, out of his inheritance. Esau consoled himself by planning to kill his brother. As part of the family dysfunction, we also learned that Rebekah, Esau and Jacob’s mother, despised Esau’s wives, who were not Jewish.

At the beginning of this week’s portion, Jacob has fled from his home, either to get away from his angry...Read more...

Archaeologist have discovered evidence of human burial rituals from 15,000 year ago. The act of burying beloved family members might have been the earliest form of religious impulse.

In biblical times, the ideal would have been for a family to own a cave in which to bury their dead. Typically, a body would be left in the cave for a year to decompose then someone would enter the cave to collect the bones and put them in a container,...Read more...

led this week by Columbia University Professor Emeritus Martin Meisel

Professor Meisel has long been interested in chaos, and this past August, he published a book that looks at chaos in language and uses the biblical Tower of Babel story as a good starting point.

It is human nature to fear chaos. When something happens, we feel there must be a reason. We seek pattern, or sequence, or meaning. One way that humans...Read more...

The tradition on Yom Kippur is that we fast. Today Rabbi Jaech led us on an exploration of how that tradition started.

One of the Yom Kippur readings is from Leviticus 16, which explains how to re-consecrate the Temple after it has become unclean. This includes the scapegoat ceremony where a goat is metaphorically heaped with the sins of the community and sent off into the wilderness to carry the sins away.

Starting in verse...Read more...

Led this week by Rabbi Janet Roberts

The holiday of Selichot was observed Saturday night, September 21. While leading up to the High Holidays, Selichot is an opportunity for the congregation to chant prayers asking for God’s mercy. In biblical times, this was an opportunity to remind God of the deliverance he provided for our ancestors, and to request that he, similarly, look out for us. Of critical importance in those times would...Read more...

One of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not kill.” However, our Bible is filled with stories of warfare slaughters and the triumphant warriors are not considered sinners. A better translation might be, “Thou shalt not murder.”

In America today, it would be ill-advised for people to take the law into their own hands. But in biblical times it was understood that, if someone in your family was murdered, it was expected that...Read more...

Our summer hiatus has ended! 

Anti-Semitic tropes portray Jews as scheming or devious. Our own Bible has been used against us for examples of supposed Jewish scheming. In one biblical story, our patriarch Abraham claims to be the brother of his beautiful wife Sarah in an effort to tempt Pharaoh into a relationship with Sarah. Pharaoh pays a handsome bride-price to Abraham in order to claim Sarah. However, God soon makes it clear...Read more...

The Book of Judges has a common motif where God protects the Israelite people, but then the Israelites do something to offend God. Next, God allows the Israelites to be conquered by an enemy, only to have a hero arrive who saves the people. The people return to worshipping God but, inevitably, they offend again and the cycle repeats.

One of the heroes of the Book of Judges is Samson. From birth, Samson was promised to God as a...Read more...

The Torah portion for this week starts the Book of Numbers. In the passage, God tells Moses to, “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms.” (Numbers 1:2-4)

This is a pro-census text. You could also say that this is a...Read more...