Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild

For Beit Warszawa, (October 2020)
”Bereshit bara Elohim et-HaShamayim ve’et HaAretz”; ”In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” One of the most famous sentences of all time. With these words the History of the Universe is defined from a Jewish perspective. Of course we do not necessarily believe now in the literal truth of such a bare statement, of course we are aware that there are other theories of universes and what they are, of course we know that this is only the opening sentence of a poem[…]

Simchat Torah is not really important in the Torah itself! There is a sequence of festivals starting with Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur and then Sukkot, and at the end of this latter comes an ”Eighth Day marking the End, the Closure” – ‘Shemini Atzeret’. But the Rabbis of the Mishnaic period introduced – very importantly – a principle of regular readings from the Torah in their meetings – you can find details of some of the discussions in the Mishnah, Tractate Megillah –[…]

Warsaw 7, August 2020 – There are two sides to every piece of Torah; There is what is said, and there is what is not said. To this must be added the context in which something is said and the concern about what COULD have been said instead and then, of course, there are also our own individual and communal reactions to what is said and how we relate to it, whether and how we accept it or[…]