This ceremony of investiture and ordination, Tekes Hasmakhah, represents the transmission of knowledge and authority down through the generations of Jewish leaders to the wise minds, sensitive souls and capable hands of our new cantors and rabbis. It is a moment of great celebration radiating from this room across the world, and up to the…
Month: May 2019
Defective Priests and Animals; Dignity Demanded for All. Emor 5779
Last week in Parashat Kedoshim we read one of the most enlightened passages in the Torah. In verse 14 the Torah commands us not to curse the deaf, nor to trip the blind, but to fear the Lord your God. This verse is embedded within a glorious section about social solidarity, including concern for the…
Silence Above and Below: Aharei Mot 5779
Ze’ev Wilhelm Falk was a professor of law at Hebrew University who also served as rector and faculty at the Schechter institute in Jerusalem. Born in Breslau in 1923, he fled Germany alone at 16, arriving in Israel in 1939, and went on to study in the Hevron yeshivah and then at Hebrew University. He…
