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.
Im bechukotai telechu v’et mitzvotai tishm’ru va’asitem otam—If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them… — Leviticus 26:3 Before he could receive what was waiting for him, one instruction had to be followed. Not a commandment. Not a teaching. A removal. Remove your sandals, for the place where you are standing is […]
Parashat Bechukotai Read More »
You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you, and you shall return, each person to his holding and each person to his family. —Leviticus 25:10 The portion opens on a mountain and immediately makes a claim so radical that the
Speak to the Israelites and say to them: These are My appointed times, the appointed times of YHVH, which you shall proclaim as holy convocations.—Leviticus 23:2 The word “holiday” is “holy day” with the holiness worn smooth. At some point the compression happened—two words became one, the sacred qualifier dissolved into the secular noun, and
You shall be holy, for I the L’rd your G‑d am holy.—Leviticus 19:2 Parashat Kedoshim is among the densest portions in the weekly parashah cycle. In the span of a single chapter, Torah covers the corners of the field left for the poor, the prohibition on theft and lying, the fair treatment of workers, the
For on this day purgation will be effected for you, to purify you of all your sins; before YHVH you will become pure.—Leviticus 16:30 The rabbi has been standing at the functional center since morning. By the time neilah approaches—the closing prayer, the sealing of the gates—the exhaustion visible on him is not the tiredness of a
Parashat Acharei Mot Read More »
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
