NiSh’ma – Changing Notions of Torah
“For the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” —Deuteronomy 30:14
Our verse provides an emphatic answer to a question fundamental to the human spirit: Where do wisdom and holiness reside? Preceding verses explored where the Torah, our blueprint for holiness, is not: It is not in [...]
NiSh’ma – The Jewish Table
Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish explain: At the time when the Temple stood, the altar used to make atonement for a person; now a person’s table makes atonement for him. (Talmud Bavli, Chagigah 27a) “A person’s table makes atonement for him…” by means of welcoming guests to one’s table, “hachnasat orchim.” —Rashi on Chagigah 27a
What [...]
NiSh’ma – Consumerism
“And you shall bring no abhorrent thing into your house or you will be under the ban like it. You shall surely despise it and shall surely abhor it, for it is under the ban.” —Deuteronomy 7:26
Simply read, this verse bans the abhorrent from the Jewish home. In doing so, it asks us to define [...]
The Prophets and the Moralists
“The moralists discuss, suggest, counsel; the prophets proclaim, demand, insist.”
—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets
When I first picked up Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s seminal book on the prophets, I read it with a healthy dose of skepticism. As an organizer, I was frustrated with people who fashioned themselves as modern-day prophets — men and women who [...]
NiSh’ma – Tzedakah
Honor God with your wealth. (Proverbs 3:9) If you are good-looking, don’t be morally loose, lest people will say, “So-and-so is good-looking, and he exploits it by having inappropriate sex.” Instead, honor God with your wealth. Another interpretation: Honor God with your wealth, so you don’t come to honor God without any wealth. Yet
another interpretation: [...]
NiSh’ma, September 2011
Come see! Behold, the union of all things at once: “The Lord has made bare His holy arm…” (Isaiah 52:10): This is the [left] arm of salvation, of vengeance, of redemption. Why? To raise Israel from the dust: to bring Her to Him… And when this [arm] is raised to receive Her, fear engulfs the [...]
NiSh’ma June 2011
“You prepare a table for me in the full presence of my enemies; You anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
Psalm 23: 5
I also understand the “cup” both as a reminder to be grateful for abundance, and also as a source of strength from which to draw when I feel most depleted. The cup [...]
And Jacob Wrestled
Nish’ma April 2011(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(”script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(”script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();
If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
Yiddish Proverb
No study has ever been done to discover the root cause of why people stop identifying with Judaism. If we worry less about Judaism as a culture and more about monotheism, we might find that — suddenly — people have something more to believe in. Jewish identity is more than matzah ball soup and [...]
NiSh’ma – Stories & the Jewish Narrative
Featured Artist: Siona Benjamin, David Wander and Peter Pizele
