Human Rights

Shelach 5766 By Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff Nevertheless the people, who live in the land, are strong, and the cities are walled, and very great; and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.    …Numbers 13:28 How many Palestinian children’s lives are worth one Jewish Israeli soldier’s life?  How many Iraqi children’s lives...
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The rabbis of two thousand years were a real bunch of radicals. When they were confronted with something in the Torah that conflicted with the sense of values and ethics they learned from the Torah itself, they resolved the issue by deciding in favor of the values over the explicit law found in the...
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In the midst of a whole bunch of stuff about different kinds of ritual impurity, this week’s Torah reading has a commandment which stands out like a beacon from amongst all the descriptions of emissions and skin disease: “And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” That’s all it...
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 Surely the greatest treasure the world has ever known was the original two tablets of the Ten Commandments. These were no ordinary pieces of stone with a little of writing engraved on them. In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, we are told that tablets were ma’aseh Elohim, they were the work of God—the...
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Today is Shabbat Zachor, when we are commanded to remember what Amalek did to us—which is to have attacked us from the rear, targeting the women and children. This morning’s Maftir reading tells us that when we come into the land of Israel we must blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven,...
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The Muslims call us Jews “people of the Book.” It’s not a bad description. Look at the elaborate ritual we went through this morning with our book—quoting verses and saying prayers before taking the book out of the cabinet, carrying the beautifully dressed book reverently around the synagogue, people kissing it as it passes...
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