Off the Pulpit Archives

“When God saw that Moses turned aside to look, God called out of the bush (Ex. 3:4)” Why? What was so special about Moses turning aside to look that only then did God call out? The rabbis teach that the...

“Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife” teaches Genesis 2:24. I have always thought that verse was directed toward parents and even more, in-laws.   It is a familiar scenario. You raise children,...

The first mitzvah in the Torah is to be fruitful and multiply. The last mitzvah is to write a Sefer Torah. In some sense, these are the same mitzvah.   Judaism entrusts its adherents with the sacred task of transmission....

How can we be commanded not to covet? After all, wanting something is natural. Yet the tenth commandment teaches us not to covet. There are many answers in the Jewish tradition. One points to the idea that you only covet...

In the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” God comes out of the sky and growls at the prostrate knights: “Oh, don’t grovel – one thing I can’t stand is people groveling.” Well, Monty Python may be British but...

The medieval poet Moses Ibn Ezra used the following simile: We are like passengers on a ship, believing we are stationary when in fact we are headed toward a destination. Similarly, we do not realize that as we believe our...

The cauliflower explains a lot about the Jewish tradition. A fractal is a self-similar pattern, whose scale or size differs. Things in nature display different degrees of such self-similarity — break a cauliflower apart and a piece will look like...

Resolutions for the New Year: 1. To laugh often, but in amusement, not in derision. 2. To pray often, but with appreciation, not avarice. 3. To lift my eyes from screens and remind myself of the variety, beauty, occasional savagery...

In a Talmud seminar Talmud with Prof. David Weiss Halivni we once came across a misquotation from a well known Talmudist. When we questioned Prof. Halivni, he asked us in turn how many had complete sets of Talmud in our homes. We...

Years ago I read a brilliant anecdote about George S. Kaufman, prize winning playwright: On the TV show “This Is Show Business” the youthful singer Eddie Fisher complained that girls refuse to date him because of his age. This was...