Shalshelet
The nearly 305,000 words of a handwritten Torah scroll tell tales, state laws and inspire ideas. It is devoid of some useful things like vowels, punctuation and cantillation marks. Cantillation, or trope, is the musical chanting that can help bring Torah text alive when it’s read aloud, as during services.
It’s Our Story
Last week’s Torah reading was mostly the story of Noah and the Flood. One of the more curious elements of the tale is what happens when the earth dries out enough for the animals and their human tenders to exit the vessel.
Bee Juice
My recent posts...After havdala ended last week’s Galeem (“waves,” our Sunday school), the usual joyful mayhem erupted in the lobby: Kids running down halls for a water bottle, a work of art, a lollipop; parents calling after them “Remember your ________!”; brief...
Welcome to”chol”
A couple days of magnificent weather have been a welcome respite from the bounty of precipitation during Sukkot and the closing festival days. This morning, we stored away our sukkah — unscathed by the nor’easter — for next year.
Testing
For the Israelites, the revelation at Sinai — with its Ten Declarations — is an encounter with the Divine even more intimate and intense than was the Exodus. They saw, they witnessed the thunder and lightning, the shofar blaring, the mountain smoking…and they stepped back.
Even after Moshe/Moses tells them what Adonai is doing, they remain at a distance. Are they fearful? Wary? Awestruck?
Next, Adonai, acting through Moshe, begins presenting to the Israelites laws, regulations and blueprints that will serve as the foundation and framework of a new Adonai-centered religious, political and cultural society.
Here we sit, sharpened #2 pencils at hand, ready, thinking, “How will we know if we pass the test?”
Then the proctor announces, “This is a timed test. Once you begin, you are to complete it in one lifetime.”
Shabbat shalom ! שבת שלום