The Lost Ark

So many people love conspiracy theories, fantasies, and lost causes. Read more

Shabbat Chayey Sarah

Was Hagar Abandoned? Read more

Shabbat Eykev

Curses – ancient and modern

It is amazing how very often the weekly Torah portion that we read in Synagogues on Shabbat contains startling messages so highly relevant to our current situation. Read more

Torah among sacred texts set for destruction by NZ National Library

The New Zealand National Library is under fire after it was revealed that more than 500,000 books — including religious texts such as the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran — are marked for destruction as part of a controversial cost-saving initiative. Read more

Shabbat Pinchas

Qualities of Leadership Read more

Chief Rabbinate must allow women to take rabbinical tests, High Court rules

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel will be required to open its rabbinical tests to women, the High Court of Justice ruled on Monday. Read more

Religious party quits Netanyahu government over army exemptions

Israel’s United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party announced it is leaving both the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition on Monday night, intensifying a long-running dispute over the issue of army exemptions for full-time religious students. Read more

Shabbat Vayigash

Politics
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Shabbat Mikeytz: Dreams

Dreams play a very important part in the biblical narrative. Read more

Shabbat Eykev Do as you would be done by

The weekly reading of Eykev follows the pattern of the previous three weeks. Read more

Shabbat Balak – Listening to Magicians

It seems strange that the whole part of the Torah we read this week should be named after a Midianite/Moabite King, Balak, and devoted to a non-Jewish magician Bilam. Read more

Shabbat Chukat: The Unknowable

There are various words for law in the Bible. Read more

Shabbat Behukotai: What am I worth?

As we reach the end of the book of Leviticus, we’ve run through a series of laws, ethical and ritual, that relate to other human beings, the Land, and God. Read more

Shabbat Acharei Mot: Forbidden Sex

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Shabbat Metzora – Shabbat HaGadol:  Elijah

“Behold I will send you Elijah (Eliyahu) the prophet before the great awesome Day of God and he will reconcile fathers to children and children to fathers” (Malachi 3:24). Read more

Shabbat Yitro: Belief

“I am Ad’nai, your God, who took you out of Egypt” (Exodus 20:2).  Read more

Shabbat Bo: Lessons from the Exodus

There are two themes amongst the many in this week’s Torah that stand out as being particularly relevant at this moment in time. Read more

Shabbat Vaeyra: Persuasion

This week, we read about the process through which Moses and Aaron try to persuade the pharaoh that he should let the children of Israel go. Read more

Shabbat Shemot: Knowing, Forgetting, remembering

A new king arose who did not know of Joseph (Exodus 1.8). Read more

Shabbat Vayehi – Fear not

As we complete the book of Bereishit, Genesis, this week, Jacob has died, and the brothers now turn to Joseph and say, “Our father asked us to beg you to forgive us for what we did to you”( Genesis 50:15-21 ). Read more

Torah scroll, hidden during Holocaust, brought to Yad Vashem

A Torah scroll hidden in the attic of a synagogue in Poland that was ransacked on Kristallnacht was placed in the Holy Ark at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust remembrance centre. Read more

Shabbat Vayigash: Diplomacy

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Shabbat Mikeytz: End of Days

This week’s Torah reading starts when Joseph had been in jail for a crime he had not committed. Read more

Shabbat Vayeytzey: Initiative

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Shabbat Toldot: Esau or Ishmael

Last week, we read about how Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury their father. And in fact, they lived together at the same place, Be’er Lechai Roi. Their coming together seems to have been complete. Read more

Shabbat Lech Lecha: Bad people and good

We are living under conditions that remind us of how much we Jews can be hated and to what extremes our enemies can go in order to express such hatred. Read more

Shabbat Ki Tavo: The Land of Israel

“When you enter the land that your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take the first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that your God giving you, and put them in a basket and go to the place that God chooses and to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, “I acknowledge this day before your God that I have entered the land that swore to our fathers to assign us.” ( Deuteronomy 26:1-2). Read more

Shabbat Ki Teytsey: Long Life

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Shabbat Shoftim: Kings and Judges

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