Encounters with sacred text — weekly parashah reflections, midrashic exploration, and close readings drawn from the Torah and tradition. These writings return to the scroll not as artifacts of the past, but as living sources of moral clarity, questioning, and renewal.
This shall be the law of the metzora on the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest.—Leviticus 14:2 The metzora has been standing at the edge of the camp for an unspecified period of time. He is not simply sick. The tradition is precise about this. He is the person whose corrupted speech—speech […]
Speak to the Israelite people thus: When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be impure seven days; she shall be impure as at the time of her condition of menstrual separation. … She shall remain in a state of blood purification for thirty-three days… Leviticus 12:2, 4 There is a moment that
Parashat Tazria…Revisited Read More »
Parashat Tazria opens in territory that makes most modern readers uncomfortable. Leviticus 12 addresses the impurity of a woman after childbirth. Leviticus 13 turns to skin afflictions: inflammations, rashes, shiny spots, discolorations. The priest examines, pronounces, sends away or admits. Most commentators treat it as a historical curiosity—a diagnostic manual for conditions that no longer
Some things cannot be spoken. Not because the words are forbidden, not because the throat has closed from grief, but because the thing itself stands outside the reach of language. Words require edges—a beginning, an end, a container that can hold meaning. Some encounters dissolve those edges entirely. What remains, when the edges are gone,
You don’t notice a fire going out. Not at first. The room cools so gradually that by the time you feel it, the coals have been dark for hours. The wood is ash. The morning is already gone. This is not how fires die in stories. In stories, fires are extinguished—by wind, by water, by
The book of Leviticus opens with blood and fire and the smell of burning flesh. Most modern readers recoil—or skip it entirely. This is a mistake. What looks like primitive ritual is, on closer reading, a sophisticated theology of approach. It asks a question that has never stopped being relevant: how does a finite creature
The final parashah of Exodus opens not with drama but with a ledger. Eileh pekudei ha-Mishkan—these are the accountings of the Mishkan. What follows is precise: 29 talents and 730 shekels of gold. 100 talents and 1,775 shekels of silver. 70 talents and 2,400 shekels of bronze. Every ounce of material gathered from the willing
Parashat Vayakhel opens with an assembly. Moses gathers—va-yakhel—the entire community of Israel. Before a single board is cut or a thread spun, Moses does two things. He reaffirms the command to observe Shabbat—even the holy work of building G‑d’s dwelling must stop for it—and then he invites the people to bring the materials from which
Forty days have passed. Moses returns from the peak of Sinai to find his people in celebration of a new god, a calf of gold. Idolatry. In his hands are G-d’s perfect words, pressed into stone by the Divine itself—the most sacred objects in human history. Zohar tells us the letters on the tablets of
Last week, in Parashat Terumah, we examined the construction of the interior Mishkan—the dwelling place built within the human heart through precision, proper materials, and correct order. The Ark secured at center, containing the covenant. The Table and Menorah in the Holy Place. The veil marking the boundary between Holy and Holy of Holies. The
