Having stated the laws of the priests and their respective functions as well as the ethical foundations of Judaism, the book of Leviticus ends with a promise and warning: a promise of the rewards for loyalty to God and a warning of the consequences of...
The Torah commands that Israelites count seven full weeks from the day during Passover when they bring the omer wave-offering (Leviticus 23:15). Immediately thereafter, on the fiftieth day, they are to bring an offering from the newly ripened grain. The purpose of the...
On of the unsung heroes of the Bible is Jonathan, son of King Saul and close friend of David. What makes him heroic, according to Sa’adiah Gaon, one of the most important Jewish figures of the ninth century, is that he embodied all of the attributes connected with the...
In a stunning explanation of the laws of tzara’at – a virulent skin disease (Leviticus 13 and 14) – Maimonides argues that the purpose of the affliction is not punishment, but education (Guide of the Perplexed, Book 3, Chapter 47). Maimonides contends that the...
Aaron’s two oldest sons, Nadav and Avihu, are incinerated because they light the altar with unauthorized fire (Leviticus 10:1-2). However, as RaShI’s grandson, Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, points out, lighting the altar is exactly what was expected of them every day! As the...
Most people fail to understand religion. Their assumption is that religion compels a person to believe in the irrational. Faith opposes reason. Religion ignores or, worse, rejects science. Hence, a religious person is akin to some medieval obscurantist who accepts as...
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, apocryphally said: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” For those who sought to explain all of human behavior in sexual terms, cigars – especially in dreams – symbolized the penis. But sometimes even the most Freudian of...
Rabbi Sol Tanenzapf noted that the Torah did not end slavery but it did transform the institution. In the ancient world a slave was chattel: property that could be bought or sold and whose very life was in the hands of a master. Scriptural law, however, limited...
Written words are often ambiguous, especially when punctuation is absent. Consider the sentence: “I gave up eating chocolate for a month” which can be read as a statement of self-denial or a statement of resignation and self-medication (“I gave up. Eating chocolate...
One of the most fascinating characters in nineteenth century Hasidism is Rabbi Menahem Mendl Morgenstern (d. 1859), known as the Kotzker Rebbe. He was known to have secluded himself for prolonged periods of time: what today we would call an extreme form of social...