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As an educator, I am often asked questions about God. "Do you believe in God?" "How do we know God exists?" "What if you find you just can't believe?" "How can you come to a belief in, or knowledge of, God?" This is my answer:
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A lot of people are disappointed with Barak Obama. I’m not talking about the “Birthers” and the “He’s a Muslim” characters. I’m talking about people who always saw him as smart, full of good ideas, right on how to fix the economy the other guys ruined, right to make a dent in America’s health care fiasco, and, in general, on the right side of most issues, but now feel he is not doing so well on a number of domestic, and, especially, foreign policy fronts.
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Parshat Beshalach begins with the nation of Israel out of Egypt, on its way to the Promised Land. However, God is not finished with the Egyptians. He “strengthens” Pharaoh’s heart, and he and his servants, perversely, chase after their recently-freed slaves, and end up at the bottom of the sea.
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Parshat Bo takes us to a climax of the Exodus story: the last three of the ten plagues, and the actual leaving of Egypt by the Nation of Israel. The Parsha begins with God saying to Moshe בא אל פרעה - "Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart, and the hearts of his servants, so that I may place my signs among them. And so that you can tell, into the ears of your son, and the son of your son, that which I have done to Egypt, and my signs that I have placed among them, and you will know that I am the Lord."
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Parenting is no pleasure. No, wait, I don’t really mean that. Let me put it differently: Parenting is a pleasure. It’s wonderful, beautiful, rewarding, and amazing. However, it also certainly does have its challenges. I think the hardest challenge is not the physical stuff you have to deal with when they’re young; I got past that by pretending it was exercise that I was getting without going to the gym.
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This week, in parshat Vayetze, we read about the life, and success, of Yaakov. He leaves his home in Canaan to escape the wrath of his brother Esav, from whom he has stolen the birthright and the blessings of their father, Yitzchak, and goes to the ancestral home of his parents and grandparents, Padan Aram. There he marries, has over a dozen children, becomes extremely wealthy, and, finally, returns to Canaan, where he will, after an absence of twenty years, have to face Esav.
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This week, in Parshat Toldot, we read the tragic story of Yaakov and Esav. At odds from the womb, the brothers are destined to be rivals from the moment they are born and, by way of their descendants, down through history. The Torah’s narrative indicates this tension, when Rivkah, feeling something strange and wrong with her pregnancy, is told prophetically that there are two competing nations in her womb, who will be bitter enemies. The Rabbis elaborate on these pre-natal predictions, seeing Esav as a potential pagan and Yaakov as a budding Torah scholar.
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This week’s parsha, Chayei Sarah, has a very obvious, basic, structural problem.
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This week's parsha, Lech Lecha, introduces us to Avraham. God's choice of him to be his representative on earth, and for that relationship to be passed on to the children he does not yet have, is the central theme of Avraham's life. In one of their more dramatic interactions, the ברית בין הבתרים - The Covenant of the Pieces - which is entered into by God and Avraham passing between the halved pieces of a variety of animal sacrifices, God informs Avraham of the exile and slavery in Egypt to which his great-grandchildren will be subjected.
