June 2009

In the examination of the human rights atrocities committed during World War II, there are many pitfalls. Growing up, I witnessed practically all of them. I recall the woefully incomplete, out-of-context Holocaust literature unit in my 8th grade English class when a school full of young people who, except for me, had never known a Jew, were asked to process the articulated anguish of Anne Frank and Eli Wiesel. In the entire district we had maybe two Jewish teachers and they certainly weren't at my school. Given no means to comprehend those well-documented horrors, my classmates took nothing from the experience.

Read more >

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Parsha Behaalotecha, Numbers 8:1-12:16.

Behaalotecha is one of the darkest parshiot in the entire Torah, full of wrath, suffering and mistrust. At the core of the parsha is a overarching commentary about family, and more specifically how we can all get on the nerves of those we love. Some of the scenes in this portion seem disproportionately harsh or graphic, but even the intense punishments visited on the Israelites have a narrative purpose. In the middle of the parsha, Moses numbers the men of Israel at over 600,000, meaning that an estimated two million people travel with the camp. If the punishments are to have a significant impact on an entire nation, they must be on such a grand scale.

Read more >

Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. Because of Shavuot last week, the Torah readings are a bit staggered, so Naso is this week's portion as well. That suits me just fine because there is a very interesting segment in Naso that we just didn't have time to cover last week. Two things, actually, though the two are placed back-to-back in the same chapter, so there is a likely link between them.

Read more >