Posts Tagged: Israelites in Sinai
Why Was Moses Not Destined to Enter the Land?
It is one of the most perplexing, even disturbing, passages in the Torah. Moses the faithful shepherd, who has led the Israelites for forty years,...
Israel’s Wedding – Thoughts on Shavuot
In Judaism, mysteries have a habit of becoming controversies, none more so than in the case of Shavuot, otherwise known as Pentecost or the Feast...
Love as Law, Law as Love
On the face of it the connections between the sedra and haftarah of Bemidbar (Numbers) are slender. The first has to do with demography....
Children of Israel Flee Egyptians as Crisis Creates a New People (SPOOF)
Approximately two million Children of Israel are now encamped in the Sinai following their extraordinary exodus from Egypt yesterday. Just days ago, they were slaves...
In Every Generation, We Must Tell the Passover Story
I have often tried to imagine how the Israelite slaves in Egypt responded to the Ten Plagues, the midnight flight and sudden Exodus into the...
Three Types of Community
A long drama had taken place. Moses had led the people from slavery to the beginning of the road to freedom. The people themselves...
Two Types of Religious Encounter
Framing the epic events of this week's sedra (Bible portion) are two objects - the two sets of tablets, the first given before, the...
Prophet and Priest
The sedra (bible portion) of Tetsaveh, as commentators have noted, has one unusual feature: it is the only sedra from the beginning of Shemot...
The Building of the Tabernacle and the Jewish Ethnogenesis
As soon as we read the opening lines of Terumah we begin the massive shift from the intense drama of the exodus with its...
