Tue, 13 Oct 2026 21:31:07 -0400WeeblySat, 10 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-bereshitAs we begin anew our reading of the Torah, there is always so much to learn, and this parsha, the first one, Breishit, is no exception.  I want to spend a little time highlighting one brief pasuk; in fact, it’s the last verse of the entire  this Torah portion. Here’s the Hebrew:


כווּלְשֵׁ֤ת גַּם־הוּא֙ יֻלַּד־בֵּ֔ן וַיִּקְרָ֥א אֶת־שְׁמ֖וֹ אֱנ֑וֹשׁ אָ֣ז הוּחַ֔ל לִקְרֹ֖א בְּשֵׁ֥ם יְהֹוָֽה:
And to Seth also to him a son was born, and he named him Enosh; then it became common to call by the name of the Lord.

I’m especially interested in that last part of the sentence: A common Chumash translation is:  IT WAS THEN THAT MEN BEGAN TO INVOKE THE LORD BY NAME.

Why am I focused on this little line? Well, it seems to me that there’s a strange ambiguity here.

• What does it mean to “invoke the Lord by name”?
• Is that a reference to blasphemy or to prayer?
• Can’t we invoke in ways that are good as well as bad?  

The key word here is huchal, which can mean BEGAN, but it can also mean to BLASPHEME. 

So, which is it?
Another translation of the Hebrew is: “Then it became common to call by the name of the Lord.”  This translation is even stranger - here we’re not even told WHAT IS BEING CALLED.

And here’s something I think you might find interesting. I looked at ten (10) different Christian interpretations of that passage, and every single one of them sees that line as positive - that, after years of corruption, the people of the earth turned to God and WORSHIPPED HIM.  

Another commentary sees this line as contrasting the religious Enosh, born to Seth, with the secular Cain.

And another Christian site tells us that here the passage makes clear that the human race has gone beyond its infancy to learn to speak the language of FAITH.
 
OK - so what about the Jewish tradition?
A famous Jewish editor and translator of Torah, Seymour Hirsch, sees the passage in exactly the same way, that is, as positive.  He notes:  “This expression refers to the worship of God.”  So, he’s in agreement with the Christians. But what is important to know is that Hirsch is the exception among virtually all Torah scholars.  Other than Hirsch, they see this passage as a reference to blasphemy.  We see that as far back as Rambam, Maimonides, who maintains that the verse is telling us that the people of the time were profaning the Lord’s name - they were calling people and idols “by the name of the Lord.”

I don’t know if this difference supports that idea that we Jews tend to be more cynical and negative, and you can interpret it any way you like.

But, think about this difference as we consider this opening Parsha, Breishit. Think about whether the trajectory we are considering is that of a positive turn to God, after the terrible murder of Abel by Cain. Or whether it is yet another reminder of the many, many ways that the human race has disappointed our Creator.]]>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/sukkot-2026-5787There are three major harvest festivals and they're also major agrarian holidays.  These are Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot.  

Obviously, Pesach is a holiday that celebrates our liberation from slavery in Egypt and Shavuot is about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.  

• What is Sukkot about?
• Isn’t there something different about Sukkot?
• Sukkot doesn’t seem to be about an EVENT.  
• Sukkot doesn’t seem to be about an ACTIVITY as in Shavuot and Pesach.

Here’s the passage that creates the mitzvah of building a sukkah:

“Live in sukkot for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in sukkot so that your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in sukkot when I brought them out of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

Rabbi Eliezer held that the sukkah represents the clouds of glory that surrounded the Israelites during the wilderness years, protecting them from heat during the day, cold during the night, and bathing them with the radiance of the Divine presence.  In contrast, Rabbi Akiva takes a much more literal view:  he maintains that the sukkah has no symbolism whatsoever. It’s JUST a hut, and that’s that.

• How can Akiva even think that?
• How can Akiva be right?
• If he IS right, then what is the miracle?  

We can of course see the miracles associated with our flight from Egypt. And we certainly see the miracle that led to our receiving of the Torah.  But what’s so miraculous about living in a hut? Lots of nomadic people probably did it in ancient times; and still today, lots of nomadic people continue to live in temporary housing like huts. 

But let’s think about this a little more. If Rabbi Eliezer is right, then what sacrifice did the Jewish people make? If Eliezer is right, then the clouds of glory kept the Israelites safe all the time. They were never too cold at night, never too hot during the day, and they could feel God’s divine presence at all times.

Granted, that’s miraculous.  

But it would mean that the Jews didn’t need faith.  It would mean that they lived for forty years in the desert with no physical challenges, with no need for faith.  If, on the other hand, Rabbi Akiva is right, then it means that the Jews risked EVERYTHING in order to reach the Promised Land. It means that the Jews trusted that God would find them a permanent home, after years of dwelling in these temporary, fragile structures.

The Tanakh tells us that Sukkot is the ONLY holiday that will one day be celebrated by the entire world.  Imagine - not Simchas Torah, not Pesach, not Yom Kippur.  Sukkot.  How could that be?

Perhaps we will always need the physical reminder of our humble origins.  Perhaps we will always need to remember that we need to have faith, even when we are feeling insecure and vulnerable. Isn’t that the nature of faith, that we can believe at those times when it might be hardest to believe?

Sukkot is a holiday that’s all about ephemerality. Everything that we see as permanent in our world–everything that we pour all of our efforts into, everything that stresses us out on a daily basis - is fleeting.

Sukkot is a tangible reminder of the intangible. For a week, we construct a deliberately flimsy house in our backyards or terraces in order to remind ourselves of our relationship to God. Instead of a roof, we have thin branches between which we can see the stars. For a week, we make a statement: we trust in God rather than more sturdy walls and rooftops to protect us, just as God did for the Israelites in the desert on their way to Israel all those years ago.  Just as God has done for Jews throughout the ages. Just as God does for the state of Israel today.

By tradition, Sukkot is called, zeman simchatenu, “our time of joy.” What a miracle that is!  Jews, throughout the ages, were able to experience risk and uncertainty at every level of their existence and yet – while they sat betzail emunatah, “under the shadow of faith” - they were able to rejoice. That is spiritual courage of a high order.  Rabbi Jonathon Sacks has argued that faith is not certainty: faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.

That is what Sukkot represents if what we celebrate is sukkot mammash, not the clouds of glory, but the vulnerability of actual huts, open to the wind, the rain and the cold.  Rabbi Sacks called Sukkot a “seminar in happiness,” because when you sit in a shack, exposed to all the elements, you can still experience joy.  When you’re surrounded by God and by the people you love, you have everything. An open roof, an open door, an open heart.  

CHAG SAMEACH]]>Sat, 05 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-nitzavim-vayeilechI know some of you are Yiddish mavens; or at least you know more Yiddish than I do.  But tell me if you know what this means:  ES IZ SCHWER TZU SEIN A YID.
 
Yes, it means it’s hard to be a Jew.
Does everyone agree?  I think we’d all probably agree that being Jewish, as rewarding as it is, is also challenging.  We may be the Chosen People, but it’s a lot of responsibility.  Whether it’s keeping kosher, attending long services, or constantly doing mitzvot.  It’s a lot. And sometimes, maybe especially this time of year, we may really feel the pressure.  We try to maintain secular jobs and keep up with family, cooking, and doing teshuvah.  We try to live in the moment, but we are anticipating how big a brisket to get, where we’ll be seated in our new High Holiday seating arrangement, or when we’ll get out of services.

Or maybe that’s just me!

So:  ES IZ SCHWER TZU SEIN A YID.

BUT this week’s parsha - Netzavim - tells us something a little different. Now remember that we’ve just come off all those curses of Ki Tavo, and we have been hearing Moshe’s long, obsessively long, instructions to the Jewish people about what they will have to do once he is no longer their leader. How they will have to conduct themselves in the Promised Land.

BUT Netzavim tells us that it’s really NOT SO HARD.  And, after the nightmare curses that are described, and the demanding mitzvot that we are required to follow, this passage seems really strange, almost out of place. But I wonder if Moshe suddenly realizes that he’s not making Judaism very appealing. I wonder if he realizes that the people are dealing not only with the curses and the blessings and the high bar that God has set for them. They are also dealing with the impending death of their leader Moses. So perhaps he’s smart enough to lighten up.

So what does he tell them?

First, he tells them that the instructions are “not too baffling.” In other words, this shouldn’t be hard to understand.  

• Don’t charge interest
• Shoo away a mother bird before you take her eggs
• Be kind to the widow and the orphan
  

​How hard is that?

And he also tells them: “It is not beyond reach.” In other words, there’s nothing here that a good, solid, everyday human being can do. You don’t have to be Superman or even Moshe to be able to follow these commandments. 

And then he’s very clear - these instructions are not in the heavens. If they were in the heavens, then you’d say...

“Who among us can go to the heavens and get it for us?”  

The answer is that you don’t need someone to do that because the rules and regulations are not to be found in heaven.  Nor is it “across the sea.”  In those days, it must have seemed just as daunting to go to the heavens as it was to cross the sea. So Moshe tells the Israelites:  you don’t need someone to cross the sea to get this wisdom for you.  

Instead, he completes his speech with a little bit of cheerleading...

“The thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.”
 
No one is going to claim that observing the principles of Judaism is a piece of cake. (In fact, if you think about it, the cake has to be kosher, and the kind of cake depends on what you’ve just eaten, etc. etc. etc.).

NO. It’s not easy, and I don’t want to imply that it is. But at this time of year, I think that we tend to focus so much on the challenges that this section from Netzavim is a good reminder. We can be good Jews. We can experience joy in being Jewish.

Because, ultimately, this “THING” (as the Torah calls it) is close to us - it’s in our hearts and our mouths.  And Netzavim begins with everyone assembled - from the water drawer to the woodcutter, from the Kohanim to the “stranger within your camp”

EVERYONE has to hear this message, because EVERYONE, no matter what their station in life might be, EVERYONE is capable of walking in God’s ways and keeping his commandments. I think that kind of sense of shared responsibility and equality is part of what makes Judaism so beautiful.]]>Sat, 29 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-ki-tavoWords of Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld
President of Hebrew College

One month from today, Jewish communities around the world will gather to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new year in the sacred rhythm of Jewish time.

Hope for renewal stirs especially deeply within us during this season.  We imagine ourselves standing before the gates of a new year, the gates of possibility, the gates of repentance, return, and repair. But, of course, the real question Is whether we will take the risk of unlocking the gates inside of us.

There is a dramatic refrain included in the liturgy for Rosh Hashanah. Immediately after each blast of the ram’s horn, as the sound of the shofar still echoes in the room, We stand together and say...
 
Hayom Harat olam.
Today the world is conceived.
A mythic claim is being made
 
Since, according to tradition, Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of the creation of the world. But more importantly an existential demand is being made. Stand up, listen, and let yourself see the world with new eyes. Clear away the debris of disappointment and despair. Do not think you are too late, too tired, too old, too weak, too scared, too hurt, too flawed.  We are all just beginning, we are all just beginners.
 
Today the world is conceived.
The Rosh Hashanah liturgy beckons us back to the beginning of time. We are invited to imagine the world as utterly new. A pristine universe of potentiality stretched out before us. We are asked to consider the possibility of such vast possibility.
It is a big ask.
And then Ten Days later, on Yom Kippur, we are asked to exercise a different set of soul muscles. We’re asked to consider the possibility that we are out of time.

This is the act of imagination at the heart of Yom Kippur. We abstain from eating, drinking, and making love. We utter a variation of the death bed confessional. Many of us wear white, like the shrouds we’ll be buried in. The confrontation with our mortality reaches its peak at Ne’ilah. The whole season points to that moment when we stand before the gates of repentance and plead one more time.
 
Enough denial.
Enough distraction.
Enough excuses.
Enough equivocation.
Enough.
We have reached the end of the road.
We are running out of time.

The same gates that have been beckoning us for weeks Will begin to threaten. We will not stay open forever. What will you do with the time you have left?

Another big ask.

Today, as we enter the Hebrew month of Elul, I want to invite us back to the middle.  To refrain from imagining the beginning of the world. To refrain from imagining the end of the world. And to open our hearts to beginning again right from the middle of wherever we are. Which, after all, is the only place to begin.

The middle, where, in the words of the poet Billy Collins...
 
“Things have had time to get complicated, Messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore . . .   
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack here and pitches his ragged tent.”

The middle, when, in the Torah’s central narrative so disappointment and betrayal, after the gold of the calf has been turn to dust after the fragments of the first tablets lie shattered at the base of the mountain Moses climbs to the heights a second time and begs God, 

“Oh, let me behold your presence.”

And in a great moment of forgiveness, in which divine compassion overtakes divine judgment, God tells Moses, once again, to take two tablets of stone and carve into them the words that were on the first. The same words, but this time the hand that writes is human rather than divine. This is the act of imagination at the heart of Rosh Hodesh Elul.

We who are imperfect and infinitely precious take the risk of trying a second time. May we begin again from the middle of wherever we are.
 
May we begin again in love.
]]>Sat, 22 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-ki-teitzeiKi Teitzei is actually one of our favorite parshiyot, why? 

It is full of mitzvot!  

More than 12% of the 613 mitzvot command us to obey.  But the opening of Ki Teitzei may seem completely irrelevant to our daily existence.

That opening reads...
“Ki tetzei lamilcham al oiyecha, unesana Hashem Elokecha beyadecha veshavisa sivyo.”  

“When you take the field against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your power, and you take some of them captive. . . “

And the rest of the Aliyah goes on to describe the rules for taking a beautiful woman captive and whether you can marry her and how long you have to wait if you DO want to marry her.

Now I don’t think anyone here is worried about taking women captive in wartime. 

So, we may be inclined to dismiss this passage as part of another era, as something that is no longer - and happily no longer - relevant to our lives. Or as I think Mary Belgard suggested a couple of years ago, this passage is truly ICKY.

Ironically, some argue that this passage shows that Judaism, in our long-ago past, was concerned with treating women with respect.  But many of us might think that that’s stretching it.  So, we are left thinking that the passage is either embarrassing OR irrelevant.  

BUT let me try to convince you that there might be another alternative.

To do so, I want to take a little poetic license with one of the Hebrew words in the opening of the passage - the word is VESHAVISA.  The root of that word is SH’V’H - to take captive, and that gives the pasuk - the verse - its literal sense.  But - and here’s the poetic license - doesn’t that root also look like something else? 

That something else is SH’U’V - to RETURN.  Another possible translation might be to “take back.”
Let's think about that in the context of the month of Elul. 

We are getting ever closer to the High Holy Days, and we know that those days are a period of time when we look inward, when we ask ourselves what we could have done differently, whom we have hurt, and how we can be better people in the year ahead. What keeps us from being the best people that we can be? I think we all know the answer to that question. 

It is the YETZER HARA - the evil voice inside of each of us that is always tempting us to go astray, to take the path of least resistance, to cheat on our goals.  That yetzer hara is constantly trying to take the US captive, to hold us in its spell.  But if we think about this passage in Ki Tetzei, we might imagine a kind of war between good and evil in each one of us. 

• Who will win that war? 
• Can we “recapture” our goodness, can we wrest that righteousness from the dark forces of self-destruction that lie within each one of us? 

The forces of evil are clever and powerful.  They can hold us “CAPTIVE,” SHIVYO.  They can even appear, superficially, to be beautiful. Otherwise, why would we be tempted?  But we can’t be fooled by surface appearances.  Beauty fades, and sin is never as satisfying as we imagine that it will be. 

So, let’s think about this concept as we approach the holidays. Let’s use Shabbat as a time for heightened awareness and as preparation for the awesome days to come. 

Let’s remember that beauty - THE SURFACE - fades over time. But INTEGRITY - what lies BELOW the surface - cannot be muted by time or place.]]>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-shoftimI know that we are frequently challenged, when we read the Torah, to understand how to make what we read there relevant to today. There are places where we might either reject or re-explain practices, laws, or policies that we encounter there.

For example, when the Torah describes the institution of slavery, it concerns us that slavery is not wholeheartedly condemned.

Some scholars have even claimed that God knows (and knew) that slavery was wrong, but was aware that the Jewish people were not ready to reject that institution entirely. So, He offered a compromise where the Torah gives us rules for HOW WE CAN TREAT SLAVES, even if the institution itself doesn’t go away. I don’t know if you’re happy with that explanation or that compromise, but it seems to me to be a stretch.

If God could command the Jewish people to practice 613 mitzvot, couldn’t He have also commanded them - US - to abolish slavery?

Another troubling concern is the Torah’s treatment of women - what do you do when you read about SOTAH, the practice of making a suspected wife of straying condemned to a terrible ordeal, for example? Do you just dismiss it?

• Do you wonder, as some do, whether this even bizarre practice took place?
• Do you ask why MEN didn’t have to go through SOTAH if they were suspected of adultery?

Again, so many ways to react to parts of the Torah that confuse or trouble us.

But in this week’s parsha, SHOFTIM, what we see is actually an amazingly radical, very contemporary idea. What do I mean by that?
 
I am thinking about the idea of a SANCTUARY CITY.
Shoftim includes a discussion of sanctuary cities, and though we know the term “sanctuary city,” it means something different today than it did then. For the ancient Israelites, a sanctuary city was a place of refuge where someone who had ACCIDENTALLY killed someone else could live.  The idea was that you could safely stay there until the anger of the victim’s family had abated. Today, we would say, “until the heat dies down.” 

What’s so radical about that?

Well, think about one of the many codes that came before the Torah. One I have in mind is the Code of Hammurabi (about 1754 BCE).  If a doctor bungled a surgery and the patient died, the doctor would have his hands cut off. And the code LITERALLY says that if a person causes someone else to lose an eye, then that person’s eye will be removed.  SO what we have is a very literal, very strict notion of liability.

There’s something different about the message of Shoftim, and the instructions for the sanctuary city provide the evidence for that interpretation. Because the Torah tells us that it’s not just WHAT YOU DO; it’s also whether you meant to do what you did.  

For the Torah, and for Jewish custom and practice, we care about the INTENTION of the agent.  If something is an accident, you need to go away for a while, until cooler heads prevail, but you are not killed or maimed in turn.  And we carry that philosophy over into other areas of Jewish practice.

For example, it’s always good to do a mitzvah.  But if you do that mitzvah with KEVANAH, with intention, with spirit, then that mitzvah is much more beautiful. Of course, there are times when we do what we do because we know that it is our duty, or because we know that it is what is expected. No one can have kevanah all the time. But doing the right thing with the right state of mind makes a mitzvah more meaningful.

The importance of sanctuary cities and the role that intention plays in punishment is also a statement about the developing maturity of the Israelites.  

Think for a minute about a young child. Why do children do the right thing? Until a certain age, they fear punishment. Maybe a little later in life, they hope to please their parents or fit into society. But it’s only later in life when people, fully mature moral people, realize that doing the right thing should be done for its own sake.

 And children also don’t understand the idea of intention. Like Hammurabi, they only see the end results.  If you accidentally fall and break the dinner plate that you are carrying, then you should be punished. The accidental nature doesn’t matter to a child. But, as we age, we see that it’s not only the end result that matters. It’s the question of whether you meant to do what you did.

So, the presence of sanctuary cities is a sign that, here, at the end of Moshe’s life, the Jewish people are maturing. They are becoming less dependent on miracles and the fear of God’s punishment and more aware of morality as part of character - as something INTERNAL, not something imposed by outside forces. Unlike SOTAH or slavery, that’s not anything we have to apologize for.]]>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-reehThis week’s parsha includes, among other things, a discussion of what is kosher and what is not.

Re'eh makes very clear something I think all of us know...

in order to be kosher, an animal has to have both cleft hooves AND “bring up its cud.”  

It mentions a number of animals that DO meet these criteria...

• the Deer
• the Ox
• the Sheep
• the Gazella

but there are other that DO NOT

• the Camel
• the Rabbit

Some animals like the hare and the DAMAN (whatever that is) look like they’re chewing their cud, but they’re really not.  They just chew their food for a really long time, leading us to think mistakenly that they are chewing their cud.  

We are also told that we can’t eat any animal that has died a natural death - that we can give to a stranger or sell to a foreigner, but we can’t eat it ourselves.  And the parsha also includes the famous prohibition:  we cannot boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

But there’s an interesting word in Re'eh that I want to consider just for a moment. The word is ZEMER, and it’s the last word in verse 5 that lists kosher animals, animals that have cleft hooves AND chew their cud.  The Chumash translates that word as “mountain sheep.” But Rabbi Ed Davis translates that word not as “mountain goat,” but as GIRAFFE.  

I thought that was sort of interesting - that there is no prohibition on eating giraffes.  Two things to note here: first, who would ever eat a giraffe? I don’t know any Jew who has been tempted by giraffe meat; and I’m not sure there are very many non-Jews who would eat it, either.  So why is giraffe kosher and yet not eaten by Jews?

It turns out that, according to one tradition, even though giraffe IS kosher to eat, we do not eat it because the neck is so long that no one knows where to perform the shechitah.  But that view has also been criticized because the Talmud spells out precisely where ON EVERY ANIMAL the shechitah should take place. Another view is that we don’t eat giraffe simply because our people don’t have a tradition of eating it.  You can decide which of these reasons is your reason for not eating giraffe.

But there’s something else that’s really interesting about the word ZEMER. It also means SONG or SINGER. That makes the translation of the word as “giraffe” even more intriguing, doesn’t it?  The giraffe, as we know, makes no sound.  

Maybe we wish some singers would do the same.  So what might this mean here?

Maybe the connection between the song and the giraffe represents a way to remind us that some songs are songs of the heart and they don’t have to be sung out loud. ]]>Sat, 01 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-eikev​God tested Bnei Yisrael in the desert. The tests went both ways.

• Hashem was testing B'nei Yisrael to develop their sense of faith and trust in Him.
• The people tested Hashem as a child would test a father.

The beginning of the story of the Exodus produced the initial test of the mannah. Moshe told them that every day (except Shabbat) there will be mannah descending like dew from heaven which will sustain the people.

Rav Ovadiah Bartenura wrote (on Avot 5:4) that the initial test that Hashem gave the people was in telling them “don’t go out” and yet they did go out. They were further told “do not leave over to the next day” and they did that as well. The only way they could pass the test of the mannah was for Hashem to extend the test. As it turned out, that is exactly what did occur and over the forty-year period there were no problems. The people got used to the test of the mannah.

The entire sojourn in the wilderness could be understood in this fashion. It is not only that they were being punished for the sin of the spies; it was also that by being under Hashem’s protection in every physical way they learned to trust Hashem. 

On the eve of their entry into the Promised Land, Moshe understood that the conditions under which this new generation was raised would change drastically, and unfortunately the people would fail the future tests. Moshe knew this and spoke about it in today’s Parsha and throughout the entire book of Devarim.

The Torah gives us the list of the seven fruits with which Eretz Yisrael is blessed (8:8) “a land of wheat and barley… a land of olives that produce oil, and honey.” It is interesting to note that the Torah says that olive oil is one of the blessed fruits of Eretz Yisrael.

• Why not state that it is the olive?
• Why mention olive oil?

The Talmud states that as a result of this verse, we would conclude that olives are not to be considered as beneficial to the human being as olive oil is. The Talmud even suggests that eating olives is detrimental to one’s memory, possibly when they are accompanied by a martini!

When praising the land of Israel, the Torah used the most useful forms of the produce of the land. It is of note that for many years Israel was an exporter of olives. This was true in the Roman period 2,000 year ago. Rome was actually importing olives from Israel and they could be found sold in the marketplaces in Rome.

This is bizarre considering that Italy is a major producer of olive oil in the modern period. But in ancient times this was obviously not so. As it turned out, this was not always a major blessing as it was economically. Because of the trade agreement the Romans had, ships were coming to Israel for economic trade as in olive oil and olives, and became knowledgeable of the geography and topography of the land of Israel, which proved helpful when the Romans invaded and conquered the land in the 1st century C.E.
]]>Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-vaetchananIt’s worthwhile to take a brief look at what we probably know is the SECOND version of the Ten Commandments that the Torah gives us.

There are lots of attempts to explain WHY there are two versions, and, at some point, we may want to have an adult education class or some classes that look at those hypotheses.  But, for now, let's look at a few differences in three of the Commandments.

Maybe you think they’re just a matter of semantics, but I don’t think so. Even if you don’t believe that God directly dictated the Torah to Moshe, as Orthodox Jews do, it’s striking that some key words ARE DIFFERENT.

So, let’s look at the FIRST WORD of the two versions of the FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 

•             In EXODUS: the word is REMEMBER
•             In DEUTERONOMY: the word is KEEP

The first seems to be about thoughts, maybe prayers.

The second seems to be focused on ACTION - the prohibition is on forbidden work.  

The message may be that it’s not enough just to pray and to light candles but that we also have to refrain from anything that is considered by the Torah (and by God) to be work. 

Let’s look at the FIFTH  COMMANDMENT- "honor thy father and mother"

You might notice that the version in today’s parsha ADDS a phrase: “as the Lord God commanded you.”  and it offers another reward - not just that your days will be LENGTHENED but also that “it may go well with you.”  

In other words, you won’t just live a LONGER life; you’ll live a BETTER life.  You may remember that this is one of only two mitzvot that offers a reward for obedience.

The TENTH COMMANDMENT in DEUTERONOMY is "DON’T COVET". Just look at the two differences. In a way, it’s similar to the variation we just saw in the fourth commandment.

In   EXODUS  , we’re told "NOT TO COVET"

In Va’ethannan, we’re told not only not to covet but also "NOT TO DESIRE".

So, we can’t, according to  EXODUS, actively take something from our neighbor that is not rightfully ours.  But, in today’s parsha, the mitzvah includes not only COVETING BUT ALSO DESIRING.

Again, not just actions but also THOUGHTS.

Some sages say that God dictated BOTH sets of commandments miraculously at the same time, and, equally miraculously, that Moshe heard them both clearly and distinctly.  Regardless of how you explain these two somewhat different sets of guidelines, there’s no question that the bar for us Jews is REALLY high.]]>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tbshull.org/1000265039dvar-blog1000265039/parashat-devarimI understand that many colleges and universities give retiring faculty a chance to present their “last lecture” as part of their retirement year. Well, in this week’s parsha, Devarim, that’s what we’ve got - Moshe is giving his last lecture.  

He is 36 days away, not from retirement, but from death. He is so worried about the future of the Israelites. if miracles didn’t keep us faithful, how can we be expected to follow God’s commandments when the miracles are no longer a part of our daily lives?

So, Moses - who we remember told God that he was “slow of speech and slow of tongue” - has a lot to say. 

Virtually the entire Book of Deuteronomy is his farewell discourse to the people he has tried so hard to lead. The book actually has two common names, one derived from Hebrew and the other from Greek. The Hebrew, Sefer D’Varim, refers to its first words: Eleh ha-d’varim, “These are the words [that Moses addressed to all Israel]“.  Derived from the Greek translation for Mishnah Torah, Deuteronomy means  “second law“ and refers to the fact that Moses is repeating the Exodus/Numbers narrative. 

But we know that that is not quite the case. Moses doesn’t simply restate the Exodus narrative - he takes some liberties with this second telling, perhaps for good reasons.

For example, he takes credit for the appointment of the magistrates, even though it was his father-in-law who suggested it to him. And when he rebukes the people for the lack of faith of the twelve scouts, he blames them for refusing to move forward to the promised land. But he doesn’t ever mention the negative account of giants that left the people so terrified or even the fact that it was HE who sent out the spies in the first place. 

In this second rendering Moses will simplify complexities and complications, resulting in a narrative in which Moses is God’s most faithful and obedient servant, and the people are the faithless bane of his existence.

Nachmanides (Ramban) euphemistically remarked that Moses’ rendition of this twice- told tale was designed l’hosif bahen bi’ur,  “to add clarity and explanation“ and to make sure that the entirety of the generation that would enter the Land heard it - just as the entirety of the Exodus generation experienced Sinai. 

We don’t know whether the Moses we see here is deliberately simplifying and changing some details, or whether this is truly how he remembers these events. We all know how fragile and tricky human memory can be. Sometimes we forget. And sometimes memories morph into something else. And sometimes we adjust our memories - without even realizing it - to fit what we need them to be. This may well be Moses’ emotional need as he nears the end of his life. The Moses of this parsha is aged and tired and worried.

In HIS last lecture, the fate of the Jewish people is at stake, and he knows it. ​]]>