I travel. A lot. I am often on the road for all or part of three weeks every month. As a result, I never completely unpack, keeping a set of travel basics ready to go. Then I add to that depending on the nature of the trip - business, vacation, Reform...
Looking for someone to blame? Well, some would say you’ve come to the right Torah portion because this week, in Acharei Mot, we meet the scapegoat. But those people would have it wrong.
We think of the scapegoat as the person or group who gets blamed for...
This evening I was privileged to see history in the making, attending a forum honoring the first woman rabbi, Germany’s Regina Jonas. Jonas was ordained by Rabbi Max Dienemann in 1935, but her memory had been largely lost to history until some of her papers were discovered in 1991. Co-sponsored by the American Jewish Archives and Jewish Women’s Archive, the forum was held at Centrum Judaicum in what was once the women’s section of the New Synagogue in Berlin and featured a panel discussion among modern “firsts:”
This week we celebrate our foremothers Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, the daughters of Zelophehad, whose model of advocacy for social justice still stands thousands of years later. Zelophehad has died in the wilderness, leaving no son to inherit. Traditionally, land was inherited through the male line but Zelophehad had died leaving five daughters and no sons. When the allocations were being made to the tribe of Manasseh, the Torah says that the daughters of Zelophehad came forward and, “stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and the whole assembly, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting,” and they said in part, “Our father died in the wilderness…he has left no sons. Let not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son! Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen (Numbers 27:2-4)!"