In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, Alexander Sample, the Catholic Archbishop of Portland, put out a YouTube video entitled Abortion and Catholics. It was picked up by the Willamette Week, which ridiculed the archbishop and highlighted a problematic statement buried late in the video. I’ll return to that issue in a bit.
Over 40 years of wandering, Moses found his voice. He grew into a place where he no longer questioned his insecurities; he discovered he could use words wisely and skillfully. He is more than a “man of words.” He is a man who guides, teaches, and leads with those words.
This July 31st marks the twentieth anniversary of a Hamas attack on the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at Hebrew University. Nine people died in that bombing, including David (Diego) Ladowski, who was a friend of Cantor Bitton. Janis Coulter, Marla Bennett, and Ben Blutstein also were murdered that day; In addition to the nine who died, scores of people were injured. I was one of them, sitting five meters from where the bomb exploded.
It’s hard to know what the right choice is when you feel torn between two ideas. However, that doesn’t get you out of making a choice. In this week’s Torah portion, we learn the hard way what happens when the worst choice is making no choice at all.
This week’s Torah portion confronts us with a disturbing moment. Pinchas, a zealot who killed two lovers in last week’s reading, receives God’s brit shalom, a covenant of peace. How can someone who committed murder in cold blood turn around and suddenly get rewarded for his violent behavior? My father possessed a very flat, dry wit, and I can hear him stating, “Life’s not fair, and it’s not fair that life’s not fair.”
There’s an after party in the Torah, which we celebrate every year. We learn about this moment from our Torah portion this week, Pinchas. This description of Shemini Atzeret in the Torah is a helpful reminder that gathering together for a specific purpose can be beautiful and holy.
For the past few weeks, I have wanted to offer a few words in memory of David Weiss-Halivni, who died at the end of June. He was both a Holocaust survivor as well as one of the most important Talmudic scholars of all time and taught at JTS for many years. His great innovation was to be the first scholar who discerned and separated out the historical layers, or seam- lines, of a Talmudic argument.
