In his swan song Moses salutes God as “the Rock – his deeds are perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4). RaShI, the premiere medieval commentator, takes this phrase to mean that although God is omnipotent and, thus, He can do whatever he wants, violators of His will are not...
The medieval commentators are in disagreement. When Moses declares that “I cannot come and go” (Deuteronomy 31:2), Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno comments that Moses’ declaration is an admission that in old age (and Moses was 120 years-old) any and all movement is hard....
Before he dies, Moses assures the people Israel that “Surely the instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond your reach” (Deuteronomy 30:11). He furthers assures them that “It is not in the heavens, that you should say,...
In one of his final addresses to the assembled people of Israel, Moses tells them: “When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take of every first fruit of the soil” and bring it to the...
Perhaps no verse in the Torah has inflamed the sensibilities of modern readers as Deuteronomy 25:19 that calls upon the Israelites to erase every last Amalekite. True, the Amalekites were cruel and brutal when they attacked the most vulnerable of Israelites following...
British philosophy of the eighteenth century was characterized by an ongoing dispute between the rationalists and the sentimentalists. Rationalists believed that human judgment and morality is mostly a function of reason. Sentimentalists held that human judgment and...
One of the most influential authorities at the end of the nineteenth century was Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (1816-1893), known by his acronym, NeTziV. As a prominent Lithuanian religious authority, people came to him with all kinds of questions, from ritual...
One of the premiere codifiers of the medieval period, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, known as the Ba’al Ha-Turim (1269–1343), sees in the wording of the Torah instructions on how to perform a Jewish ritual. The Torah (Deuteronomy 8:8) describes the Land of Israel as a land...
The Torah insists that nothing may be added to it and nothing must be taken away (Deuteronomy 4:2). That nothing ought to be taken away is clear. That would be rejecting the integrity of God’s word. But why not add to the Torah? It is this question that is addressed...
When it comes to lengthy sentences, there are none that compares to one in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s classic novel Ulysses. The sentence contains 3,687 words. It was the record holder until recently. Lucy Ellman's 2019 book Ducks, Newburyport, is more...