Is anything really new? Can we experience it as a “first”? Or are the things we imagine to be new just recycled fakes. In the book of Kohelet, we read, “Nothing is new under the sun,” a provocation coming just weeks after Rosh Hashanah (on Sukkot). The cosmos itself (although, strictly speaking, not “under” the sun) … More »
Entering the Land: Rahab the Prostitute
There is a remarkable group of foreign women found in the Bible — Tamar, Ruth, Jael, and Rahab — who save Israelite men from childlessness or doom. Rahab is perhaps the unlikeliest of these heroines. She is a Canaanite prostitute who protects the two Israelite spies Joshua sent to explore the city of Jericho. (Joshua 2) Because … More »
For the Very First Time: Virginity and Transformation
One Saturday night at midnight, when I was in high school, my Jewish day school friends and I went to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the first time. For the uninitiated, “Rocky Horror” is a lewd pastiche of horror films, in which burlesque sex and gender mix with tropes of aliens and monsters … More »
First Encounters: A User’s Guide
User’s Guide: Lee Moore crafted a guide to using this issue of Sh’ma on first encounters and offers eight suggestions to spark thoughtful discussion. … More »
The Gift of Mentorship
In loving memory of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a wise and generous teacher to countless seekers I cannot recall my first encounter with God because I experienced God’s presence in my life from early childhood. As impassioned spiritual seekers, my parents created a home in which the highest goal was avodat Hashem (service of God). … More »
Finding God in a Good Book
My favorite letters are J, P, E, and D. “It’s like a cryptogram,” my father always told me, whenever I asked him how it was done — how it was possible to take the text of the Bible apart in order to make it whole. The documentary hypothesis is the theory, widely accepted by most … More »
Tragedy: A First Encounter
Arthur Gross-Schaefer: “This first encounter with tragedy — the piercing loss of our son — was an experience of sadness the depth of which I had never imagined.” … More »
Ot: A Sign
A Friday afternoon in midsummer, the huge sky smudged by mist yet oddly bright. I was on holiday, alone in a cafe overlooking the harbor. My excellent husband had taken the children to swim, lending me that rare gift in a working mother’s life, a quotient of solitude. But hamu me’ei: My gut was roiling, … More »
Today, the World Is Born
The shofar howls, awaking my soul. Hayom harat olam. Today the world is born. My pager whistles, jolting me to attention. “Room One feels an urge to push.” I scurry in and take my place at the foot of the bed. When a quick check reveals that the baby is crowning, I methodically wash my … More »