Off the Pulpit Archives

Thirty years ago, I began publishing 200-word columns, first in print in the NY Jewish Week and then online. In 2004, an early collection of them was published by Behrman House called “Floating Takes Faith.” Now as I step down...

Right before Moses strikes the rock, the sin that will prevent him from entering the land of Israel, he yells at the people: “Listen now, rebels (hamorim)” [Num. 20:10]. Yet that same word, morim, can mean “teachers.” Our antagonists can...

“Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” What can this mean in the wake of something horrible? If prayer is a way of changing the world, it is too late. What good can prayers do the victims now? The 17th-century...

I spent my junior year of college at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. There I studied English and Scottish literature and wrote a letter home to my parents about how I had fallen in love with the poetry of...

The Torah begins with the letter bet (ב‎), the same letter that begins bayit in Hebrew, home. Some have taken this as a signal – here is a home in the Torah. Yet it is an uneasy home, full of...

“You shall arise as a lion each morning to do the will of your Creator.” That stirring sentence opens the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law. It reminds us that at the heart of our tradition is the conviction...

The ancient world was long ago, but it was not ancient. Rather, it was when the world was very young. We are the old ones hurtling toward the encroaching end, not the bright beginning, of human history. In his foreword...

In “The Arabian Nights,” Scheherazade saves her own life by weaving so entrancing a tale that the Sultan keeps her alive night after night to hear the next chapter. By our stories we live. Haggadah means “telling.” On Passover night,...

From the villages of Eastern Europe comes an old, classic joke. Shmuel comes in the door with a sad face, telling Esther that the Czar has decreed that every Jew must convert and become Christian. “What shall we do?” cries...

Jewish tradition is built around three axes: Creation, Revelation, and Redemption. Traditionally, these have been seen as making the world, giving the Torah and coming of the Messiah. Each also tells us something about our attitude and conduct along the...