Off the Pulpit Archives

From Ancient Greece comes a story of rival artists, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who competed to create the most realistic painting. Zeuxis drew grapes so realistic birds flew down to peck at them. Parrhasius brought his picture in covered in cloth....

“The first service a child doth his father is to make him foolish.” So wrote the 17th century poet George Herbert. In the Midrash, we are told of a man who left a strange provision in his will (Mid. Ps....

The Talmud tells of a flute in the Temple made of reeds that survived from the days of Moses: “The King issued a command that it be plated with gold, but it no longer sounded pleasant. They removed the plating...

The Mai Hashiloah (R. Mordecai Joseph Leiner, d. 1854) points to a fascinating difference between Moses and Isaac. Moses died “with his eyes undimmed” (Deut. 34:7). For Isaac, “his eyes were dim” (Gen. 27:1). The Mei Hashiloah explains that in...

Judaism values study — that is no surprise. But it also values engagement in the world. In the Talmud (Ber. 35b), there is a classic dispute: Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says one should spend all of one’s time in Torah...

The Tenth Commandment teaches us not to covet. How can emotion be legislated? Our tradition offers many answers. One points to the idea that you only covet that which you believe you can have. Whatever belongs to someone else should...

Reading of sacrifices in the Bible, many are mortified to think that ancient Israelites would slaughter animals at the Temple. It seems primitive, bloody, even barbaric. As someone who has not eaten chicken or meat in over thirty years, I...

When God approaches Moses at the burning bush, Moses is very reluctant to go to the people. He asks God “When I come to the Israelites and say, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you’ and they...

In his later years, the renowned Rabbi, Samson Raphael Hirsch, suddenly announced that he was going to Switzerland to climb in the Alps. “Why?” asked his astonished students. “Because when I come face to face with the Creator of the...

There are plants in Hawaii that are endangered because their natural pollinator is rare or extinct. People climb mountains and go from plant to plant pollinating them by hand. In certain periods of our history, an analogous process occurred. Scholars...