The following dvar Torah originally appeared March 6, 2024 in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. Click here to subscribe. Parshat Vayakhel Last week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, featured the golden calf disaster: a story of fear, betrayal, misguided impulses and, ultimately, Divine forgiveness. This week, in Vayakhel, with the golden calf
Mark Pinsky prepared this d’var Torah for the Reconstructing Judaism Board’s Executive Committee Meeting, March 9, 2023. The Reflection Space at the Legacy Museum is bathed in golden light and features the portraits of social justice heroes. Photo courtesy of the Equal Justice Institute. This week we are preparing for
Purim 2020 was the last in-person event celebrated by many Jewish communities around the country before the COVID-19 shutdown. Little did we understand that the essential psychological principle of Purim of hafichut – the reversibility of our world – would come to mean something even more profound than what we
The Shabbat before the holiday of Purim is known as Shabbat Zakhor (“Remember!”). We read an additional Torah passage (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) recalling Amalek, a genocidal enemy from our distant past who is both the spiritual and physical ancestor of Haman, the villain of the Purim story. Remember what Amalek did
(Written for Shabbat Bo, January 22, 2021, and originally published at The Times of Israel as “The Rituals of American Democracy” Used with kind permission.) Wednesday morning, I settled in to watch the inaugural events unfold. I was filled with anticipation and relief that the last four years were over,
There is a plague of darkness that has fallen not only on our land but upon the world. Actually, there are many plagues — just as in Egypt they seem to come in groups even though just one plague would be more than enough — dayyenu. The coronavirus is certainly
This d’var Torah was written during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Passover 2020 approached. While the specific circumstances have changed since its writing, the spiritual insights remain deeply relevant. There are many things these days that can lead us to fear and anxiety. We may be worried
This d’var Torah on parashat Beshalakh was delivered at the January 2019 board meeting of Reconstructing Judaism by by Seth Rosen, board chair. On the first night of Convention, Rabbi Sid Schwarz joked about how happy he was to be addressing the largest gathering of Reconstructionists since Mt. Sinai. As
Reprinted by permission of the Cleveland Jewish News. This d’var Torah is one of a series influenced by the Me’am Loez Sephardic Torah commentary. If we review briefly the last several parshiot of Exodus, we see an interesting pattern. We began with mythic moments of redemption from slavery and the
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