The interplay between text and context serves as a perennial challenge of interpreting Jewish sources, whether as parsed by traditional commentators or refracted through contemporary academic insight. Premodern classical interpreters assumed, for example, that revealed texts had divine origins; scriptural narrative was a more-or-less accurate depiction of actual events; and the chronological order of text … More »
Hope: A Challenge to Be Cultivated
Before the liturgical revisions that accompanied the rise of the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist streams of Judaism, traditional Jewish prayer addressed hope with an assurance coordinate with a continuity of faith in a covenantal God and a pre-modern embrace of classical Jewish myths of the future, both personal and collective. Rabbi Neil Gillman suggests that … More »
Roundtable: Thinking about Sin
Sh’ma asked a number of rabbis to consider how they teach about sin, and what role it plays in the spiritual lives of their students and congregants. We explored whether sin is a useful category, or if it simply engenders guilt; the relationship of belief — that is, knowing God as HaMetzaveh — to sinning; … More »