27 Oct 2023

Judaic Topics
Parashat Lech Lecha 5784 In last week’s Torah portion, Parashat Noach, God created a covenant with Noah and with his descendants. In Genesis 6, God gives directions to Noah, which he dutifully obeys. Before Noah enters the ark, in Gen 6:18, God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant (brit) with you…” but the word brit, or covenant, is not found again in the text until after Noah ha...
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02 Oct 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
I am pleased that my paper on the duration problem of Daniel 12, which was published on the Sage Advance pre-print server on March 1, 2023, has now been published in the peer-reviewed E-Journal of Religious and Theological Studies. No precise solution to the problem presented by Daniel 12:11-12 has been previously proposed. The paper can be accessed on the publisher's website, belo...
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01 Oct 2023

Judaic Topics
Sukkot 5784 Temple Emanu El of Westfield, NJ   We opened our service this morning singing The Byrd’s interpretation of the words of Kohelet – “Turn, Turn, Turn.” There are several reasons given for selecting Kohelet as the special reading on Sukkot. One of them is from a 14th century Spanish commentator called Avudraham. He suggested that the generally downbeat message of Solom...
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04 Sep 2023

Judaic Topics
The Audience is the Issue The portion of the Torah called Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8) is dominated by Moses’s restatement of the blessings and curses found in a different form in Leviticus 26. There, God described the blessings that would accrue to those whose behavior met the required standards and the curses, or rebukes, that would result from a failure to meet those standards. Th...
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26 Apr 2023

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, k...
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09 Apr 2023

Ethics Project
Having published the first major part of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse I am turning back for a while to my Golden Rule ethics project. I reviewed Jeffrey Wattles' book on The Golden Rule, as a first step back into that subject, and I was drawn to the early Christian texts on the subject that he cites. Four major treatments of the Rule were written in 17th century England. I decided to l...
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06 Feb 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
The Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai Solving a Calendar Problem Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai.02.06.23 Introduction: The day on which the Israelites are commanded to observe the festival of Shavuot is one of only ten days marked in the Hebrew text of the bible with the unusual phrase בעצם היום הזה, b’etsem ha’yom ha’zeh. That phrase and the ten days t...
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