FJRP Blog

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 –[…]