In the summer of 70 CE, Titus’s legions surrounded Jerusalem during Passover—the worst possible moment, the city swollen with pilgrims who now could not leave. The siege lasted five months. When the walls finally broke, the Temple was already burning. Josephus records that Titus initially ordered it spared; the fire was set by a soldier […]
The Parting That Wasn’t Peaceful Read More »
Matthew 5:14–16 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that
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Lo tosifu al hadavar asher anochi metzaveh etchem, velo tigre’u mimenu—You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take away from it.— Deuteronomy 4:2 Before Moses recalls a single word of what happened at Horeb—before the fire, the darkness, the voice out of the cloud—he issues an instruction about the words themselves.
Parashat Va’etchanan Read More »
The story most people know begins with hostility. It does not. In the decades before the common era, Julius Caesar extended specific legal protections to Jewish communities throughout the Roman world. The grants are documented in detail by Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews: the right to maintain synagogues, exemptions from certain civic obligations
The Weight of Rome Read More »
Matthew 9:15–17 “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the
New Wine, New Cloth Read More »
Eleh ha-devarim asher diber Moshe el kol Yisrael—These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel, on the other side of the Jordan.— Deuteronomy 1:1 The traditional Hebrew titles of the five books are taken from their opening words. In Devarim, the title also happens to describe exactly what the book is. That is not
A slab of black granite stands in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It is ten feet tall, covered edge to edge with hieroglyphic text recording the military campaigns of Pharaoh Merneptah, son of Ramesses the Great. The inscription dates to approximately 1208 BCE. Near the bottom, almost as an afterthought among the catalog of defeated
The First Accusations Read More »
The Hidden Treasure and the Pearl “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when
The Redeemer’s Field Read More »
You shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land, and the land can have no expiation for the blood shed on it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. — Numbers 35:33 The Torah is, among other things, a book of redemptions. The firstborn son is redeemed
This is the thing that the L-rd has commanded… If a man vows a vow to the L-rd, or swears an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not profane his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. — Numbers 30:2–3 A man says a few words,
