Monday, September 28, 2015

Chol HaMo-eid Sukkot

Holidays Exodus 33:12–34:26

This week's commentary was written by Dr. Alan Cooper, Elaine Ravich Professor of Jewish Studies and provost, JTS

Last month, an op-ed appeared in the New York Times under the title "Aw, Wilderness!"—an obvious play on Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!" While O'Neill's "wilderness" was a town in Connecticut, the op-ed was about the real thing, recalling the sad incident of a skier who got lost on a trail in northern Minnesota and died of exposure. In response, the Forest Service installed markers along the trail, but when the time came to replace them the agency refused to do so, claiming that the signs violated the 1964 Wilderness Act.

The article went on to discuss the problematic balance between preserving wilderness areas and providing safe access to them. An interpretation of the Wilderness Act tilted in favor of preservation led to the banning not only of signs, but also of vehicles and tools that might facilitate access and improve safety. "As a result," the author observed, "the agencies have made . . . supposedly open recreational areas inaccessible and even dangerous, putting themselves in opposition to healthy and environmentally sound human-powered activities, the very thing Congress intended the Wilderness Act to promote."

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Monday, September 21, 2015

Haazinu

Deuteronomy 32:1–52

This week's commentary was written by Rabbi David Hoffman, JTS.

Psychotherapy as a Lens for Conceptualizing Teshuvah


I have always thought it interesting that Maimonides places so much emphasis on words in the process called teshuvah, even for transgressions not against other human beings. After quoting the verse from the Torah that speaks about the importance of confession (vidui) as part of the process for repairing a wrong enacted in the world (Num. 5:5–6), Maimonides emphasizes that this must be done with words. Teshuvah cannot be limited to an internal process of reflection. Maimonides stresses that any internal commitments must ultimately get expressed with words and counsels that the more one engages in verbal confession and elaborates on this subject, the more praiseworthy one is (Laws of Teshuvah 1:1).

Freud also placed much emphasis on the role of language in the psychotherapeutic process. Talking, as in the "talking cure" (Freud would later adopt this description for psychotherapy), was not simply seen as a means for diagnosing the conflicts troubling the patient. Rather, talk itself was the treatment. Giving words to one's inner life allows a person to better understand the motivations for his or her behavior. The process of "talking things out" creates an opportunity to explore undefined feelings and conflicts. Verbally expressing this inner life allows an individual to begin to see the coherent narrative that links up his or her past with the present and a yet-to-be future. It is not so much what we say, but rather it is the process of exploring the inner life that creates healing. Talking—putting thoughts into language—is itself a transformative and redemptive process.

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Monday, September 14, 2015

Shabbat Shuva Vayeilech

Deuteronomy 31:1–30

by Rabbi Marc Wolf, JTS.

There is so much fundamentally wrong with the world today. As Chancellor Eisen wrote in his High Holiday message this year, “On bad days, the problems seem utterly beyond managing. On good days, they call for a degree of judgment, sacrifice, and national unity seldom seen in our country or our world.” My fear is that we have actually become too accustomed to calamity; too proficient at responding to disaster.

Our world is rife with adversity—be it at the hands of nature, the economy, or governments. When natural disasters ravage our country and world, we respond with aid, financial and otherwise, to assist those in need. As the economy comes dangerously close to collapse, lawmakers and advisors strategize on how to avert the crisis. When instability in governments the world over is giving way to escalating tensions, world leaders do their best to keep them under wraps with negotiations. While each appears to be manageable for the short term, collectively these states of affairs illustrate that we are much better at responding to a situation rather than changing an underlying behavior that would keep us from the brink of failure in the first place.

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Thursday, September 10, 2015

Nitzavim

Deuteronomy 29:9–30:20

On This Day God Calls To You


Parashat Nitzavim teaches us the importance of viewing ourselves as partners in a dialogue with God.


By Rabbi Bradley Artson, provided by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, for MyJewishLearning.com

Some look to religion to transmit a sense of the majesty of the past. Traditions, because they come to us from a purer time, embody fragile vessels carrying remnants of a lost insight.

Such a view of Judaism correctly perceives the treasures of our ancestors’ seeking and recording their relationship with God. But it errs in transforming the record of that search into a type of fossil, a brittle relic that can only be passed from hand to hand, without any direct contribution from the viewer.

Such an idolization of the past removes God from the theater of our own lives, and threatens to trivialize the worth of our own continuing journeys, to ignore the harvest of our own insight and response. The Torah itself rejects this excessive veneration of the past.

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Monday, September 7, 2015

Ki Tavo

Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8

The Order of Disorder


A word and its opposite may be one and the same.


By Rabbi Ismar Schorsch. Reprinted with permission of the Jewish Theological Seminary for MyJewishLearning.com.

The Bible’s most famous riddle was the brainchild of Samson. “Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet” (Judges 14:14). Samson posed it on the occasion of his seven-day wedding feast to 30 young Philistine men who came to celebrate his marriage to one of their own. On the last day, the young men responded gleefully: “What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?” Dismayed, Samson accused them of coercing his bride: “Had you not plowed with my heifer, you would not have guessed my riddle.” And indeed, threatened by them with savage revenge, she had wheedled the answer out of Samson, only to betray him, exactly as Delilah would do later in his life.

Behind the riddle lay a real life experience. On his first trip to the land of the Philistines to arrange the marriage, Samson had killed bare-handed, a full grown lion on the attack. Upon his return for the wedding feast, he turned aside to inspect the carcass. A swarm of bees had taken up residence in its skeleton. Samson scooped up a handful of honey which he savored and shared with his parents without revealing its source. The riddle conveys the impact of the experience: Samson was intrigued by the phenomenon of an object becoming its opposite. Reality seemed more fluid than fixed.

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