A beraita quoted in b. Pesahim (6a) states that one must commence study of the laws of Pesah 30 days before the holiday; the practice as codified in the Shulhan Arukh (OH 429:1), and the Mishnah B’rurah (SK 2) is that study should begin on Purim itself. In order to safeguard JTS’s reputation as a…
Category: Passover פסח
Tying Up the Ram, Trying to Be Free: Shabbat HaGadol 5776
The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes taught a course that I took one year in college, and I still savor his exploration of magical realism with our class. One of his grand themes was the elliptical nature of time. Some cultures, he claimed, view time in cyclical terms, with each development merely a return to a…
Babies as Spiritual Giants: Tazria/HaHodesh/RH 5776
Newborn babies are miraculous to see, and even more remarkable to hold. To let their tiny fingers curl around your pinkie and breathe in their new-to-the-world fragrance is divine, but sometimes this pleasure isn’t possible. A few days ago I met a newborn so small that even his parents can’t hold him—at just 2 lbs, this…
Disarming the Angel of Death: Pesah 5775
There is a wild story at the end of the seventh chapter of B. Ketubot about Rabbi Yehoshua b. Levi. He is praised for visiting patients afflicted with the dreaded “ra’atan” disease (apparently some sort of parasite in the skull) and studying Torah with them, even as his rabbinic colleagues fearfully kept their distance. I concede…
Withdraw Your Hands and Take Hold of Pesah: Shabbat HaGadol 5775
Shabbat HaGadol represents the internal emancipation that was the necessary precondition for the Exodus. Technically, the Israelites were still slaves on the tenth of the month, but when Moses called the elders of Israel and told them to pick out animals for the sacrifice, this was the moment when the people shifted their obedience from…
For the Sins of the Leader: VaYikra/HaHodesh 5775
If the first two books of Torah can be understood according to their Hebrew names—Bereshit, the book of origins, and Sh’mot, the book of names (or identities), then this week we begin Vayikra, the book of calling. We discover within it a divine calling—to approach the Tent of Meeting, just as Moses did, and to…
Redemption Begins Within: Parah 5775
Purim and Pesah are both festivals of redemption, serving as bookends in the final and first months of the Hebrew year. But Purim is by far the lesser holiday. True, the Jews of Persia escaped from Haman’s genocidal threat, but they then remained in a vulnerable position, and in the final chapters of the Megillah they…
Shabbat HaGadol 5774: Got Your Goat?
One kid, just one kid-חד גדיא, חד גדיא. Goats are the key connection between Parshat Aharei Mot and Shabbat HaGadol. Our portion features two goats that are the most visible signs of dedication and atonement of the Yom Kippur ritual, and it also offers a cryptic reference to Israel’s past history of goat worship. In…
Born Again: Tazria/HaHodesh 5774
One winter night some years ago I crossed the parking lot of Providence Hospital in Southfield, MI. Looking up, I saw a great cloud of steam rising from the heat grates, dramatically lit by floodlights mounted on the hospital roof. This dynamic swirling above the hospital, combined perhaps with the heaviness I felt in visiting…
Sacred BBQ: Shmini/Parah 5774
Spring has arrived, and with it the smell of sacred BBQ. I don’t mean that literally, especially with so many vegetarians in our community, but the confluence of Parshat Shmini and Shabbat Parah means that there is a great deal of attention paid to the selection, slaughter, sacrifice and eating of animals. Chapter 11 of…
Rabbi Danny Nevins 