fbpx Site Search | Reconstructing Judaism

The search found 4 results in 0.182 seconds.

Search results

  1. Our Akeidah, Our Binding

    There is a thread running through all the Rosh haShanah portions, except one: that thread is fathers and children, mothers and children.

    The Akedah is the sole exception.

    Where are the mothers today? 

    This is an impressionistic reading of the Akedah.

    It does not explain the text.

    This is not the comfortable reading that, in praising our ancestor Abraham, gains credit for ourselves.

    This is not the reading that shows we are a people who have long put aside idolatry and child sacrifice.

    I have no comfort today, only questions.

    https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/our-akeidah-our-binding

    Posted on: 2016/05/06 - 10:13am

  2. The Akeida: Questions of Sacrifice

    Each year, on the second day of Rosh Hashana we discuss the Akeida - the story for the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac. Each year we, collectively, struggle with the psychological impact and the personal ethics of the story. How could a father do such a thing? What did Isaac feel? What did Abraham feel? What did Sarah feel? What did God feel? What did the ram feel? We discuss these issues as if synagogue were a family therapy workshop. We take up the story as if it were a vignette in a modern novel, and that its point is to give us insight into the human psyche.

    https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/akeida-questions-sacrifice

    Posted on: 2017/02/10 - 3:43pm

  3. Hagar: The Immigrant Worker

    Many, many years ago in a distant land a woman named Sarah was married to Abraham. Sarah was not able to bear children. She was distressed and often wondered how she could increase her standing in the community and keep the wealth she and her husband had acquired in their family, both of which depended on having children. One day she realized the answer was right there before her eyes in the form of her domestic help, the young immigrant woman from Egypt named Hagar. Sarah knew that Hagar needed the job at her house and would do whatever it took to keep it.

    https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/sermon/hagar-immigrant-worker

    Posted on: 2017/08/15 - 4:06pm

  4. Hagar the Stranger

    Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it, Ben Bag Bag taught about studying the Torah. Reflect on it, pore over it, grow old and gray with it, for there is no better reward than this. Well, I’m not gray yet, but I sure am getting older, and bald already happened. And with age maybe I’m starting to repeat myself more, but I’ll tell you again: Ben Bag Bag, the ancient sage with the best alliterative name, was a wise man. The Torah continues to reveal its deep wisdom to me, and ever-greater connecting patterns of meaning unfold before me.

    https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/sermon/hagar-stranger

    Posted on: 2017/08/17 - 3:38pm