17 Mar 2017

The centerpiece of Parashat Ki Tisa is the episode of the golden calf; the egel zahav that is formed (in some way) by Aaron at the insistence of (some of) the people when Moses was “late” in descending from his encounter with God. The sense one gets when reading the story is that Moses had to have been quite late in his return; late enough to cause a great deal of anxiety among those ...

13 Feb 2017

Introduction There are some moments in time that are so powerful, so consequential, that they seem to crystallize, to become matter, to ossify. Time becomes bone. Seven such bone-like moments (and only seven) are found in the Hebrew Bible when it is read in the Hebrew. Those moments are so consequential in human history and in the history of the Jewish people that they are described in...