Jewish identity is irreducibly made up of both religious and ethnic components.  One of the situations where this complexity comes to the fore is for converts (or in Hebrew: gerim), people who become Jewish but do not necessarily have ethnic Jewish ancestors.  And yet, our liturgy is full of references to the “God of our ancestors” and similar formulations assuming an ethnically Jewish background.  How should Jews by choice interact with a liturgy that assumes, at least sometim...

R. Elie Kaunfer on Parashat Ki Teitzei: Are Gerim Treated Differently in Prayer?

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Every year, by good calendrical fortune, we read in Parashat Emor the commandment of Sefirat ha-Omer, the “Counting of the Omer,” during the period in which we actually count the Omer.  This moment of sync between reading and ritual presents us with an opportunity to recognize our contemporary practice as continuous from the words of the Torah.  Yet when we begin to read through those words, we quickly see that our counting ritual today looks very different from the original mitzvah...

R. David Kasher on Parashat Emor: Recounting the Omer

I have always found it difficult to find an observance of Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzma’ut that feels meaningful and authentic as a Jew living in the Diaspora.  In Israel, the observance of these holidays is effortless and all-encompassing: you simply have to be present and you are in it, flowing from the intensity of Yom HaZikaron to the joy of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut.  It’s the music on the radio, it’s the tzfirah (siren) in the streets that brings everything to a halt in a moment of sil...

R. Avi Strausberg on Yom HaZikaron/Yom Ha'Atzma’ut: At a Distance

The style and content of Parashat Kedoshim remind us immediately of an earlier reading: Parashat Mishpatim—back in the Book of Exodus, just after the revelation.  Both parashiyyot are composed almost entirely of dense legal code: one law after another, for chapter after chapter.  And both open with a framing statement naming a value category that characterizes the laws that follow.With this structural similarity, the Torah places the two primary values named by the two codes—justice...

R. David Kasher on Parashat Kedoshim: Codes in Conversation

For many of us, the past six months have been an education in powerlessness.  From where I sit in America, I felt powerless hearing about the brutality and depravity of October 7.  I felt powerless sitting comfortably in my home while day after day people were held hostage in underground darkness, uncared for and unseen.  I felt powerless as the death toll of Palestinians civilians rose and Gaza’s population fell into immense suffering.  I could do my one minute a day to c...

R. Avi Strausberg on Yom HaShoah: Power and Powerlessness

With the mishkan operational and the priesthood now in place, Parashat Aharei Mot begins with a description of the service that will be the pinnacle of that system: the Yom Kippur Avodah.

R. Elie Kaunfer on Parashat Ki Teitzei: Are Gerim Treated Differently in Prayer?

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