Israel / Palestine

Many of us are war-weary and disheartened this week as we open the final book of Torah—Devarim or Deuteronomy. The Rambam called this book Mishneh Torah (repetition of Torah), because so much of it contains Moshe’s retelling of the stories that our ancestors lived out in the 40 years’ walk through the Wilderness. The aged...

The reunion was to take place the next morning. Each of the brothers, alone within his own encampment, struggled with his own fears – and his own memories. Esau, the older, was sure that his younger brother would be up to his old tricks. He remembered how he had done everything his father had asked...

In this week’s Torah portion, we read the following words about the first Jew ever to set out for the land we call Israel:  “V’Avraham zakein ba bayamim” – “Abraham was old, advanced in years.”  Torah scholars point out that the phrase is redundant – if he’s old, we already know he’s advanced in years. ...

For millennia, we Jews have been burying our dead outside the city limits, in caves, in fields and on hillsides. Just recently, for example, I stood with a crowd of people in a field, waiting to bury a friend, cousin, classmate, brother, son. Together we, the living, placed one of our own into the earth....