Thoughts on Parashat Vayetze The Torah portion for this week starts with the story in which Jacob leaves his hometown of Beersheba and journeys to Charan, a major ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia (today’s southeastern Turkey). On this supposedly pretty long journey he encounters a certain place and sleeps there dreaming of a ladder connecting […]

For Beit Warszawa, 22nd. November 2019 – This sidra has a particularly personal message for me at present, as it commences with the death of an elderly matriarch and the preparations that need to be made for her burial – and my own mother is approaching her own end, slowly and with dignity. But this […]

Thoughts on Parashat Vayera. The Torah portion of this week contains only great and famous stories. We have in it the story of Abraham interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah, their destruction, the story of Lot and his daughters. Then we return to Abraham again, this time he is in Geraar where he tells King Abimelech […]

Thoughts on Parashat Noah This week’s parasha contains two great narratives that are at the foundations of the Judeo-Christian civilization and have inspired people for centuries: the story of Noah and the flood as well as the story of the Tower of Babel. The beginning of the story of Noah tells us about the great […]

Beit Warszawa. 1. November 2019 – 3.6mm per year; this is apparently the current rise in sea level per year… At the end of the Flood story God swears Genesis 9:11) never to bring a Flood upon the Earth again – or at least, not a flood of Waters, there are many other destructive options […]

Beit Warszawa, Shabbat Chol Hamo’ed Sukkot, 18th. October 2019. For the Shabbat in Sukkot the rabbis chose as a Torah reading Devarim (Deuteronomy) Chapter 8, which stresses the way in which the Israelites had to spend (and suffer) a lengthy period, forty years, in the wilderness. This seems appropriate to our own congregation which is […]