Thoughts on Parashat Shemini

What is God? Who is God? One way to answer these questions is to try to draw the boundaries of the so-called divine reality, as something that goes beyond the reality perceived by our senses, as something whose existence we only intuitively sense and which explains and gives meaning to our experiences. We can start from there. We can also do a contextual analysis of the concept of God in the various scriptures in which it occurs and thus try to approximate who God is. Even though the second approach seems more ‘objective’ it is not:[…]

Thoughts on Parashat Tzav

There are basically two opposite attitudes human beings can adopt towards their existence: a deep humility towards the infinity of the universe and the infinite complexity of human life, as well as the position of arrogance – a position of ‘solipsistic narcissism’ where everything, including other human beings, is treated as an object that has been created only to serve us and our ventures. The vast majority of people live somewhere between these two extremes; at one end of this spectrum live the saints, on the other – sociopaths and psychopaths.[…]

The revelation at Sinai has already taken place, the construction of the Tent of Assembly has just come to an end. The Book of Leviticus begins at a time when the theological and material foundations of the religion professed before the newly liberated Israelites from Egypt had just been laid. Therefore, the parshah we are […]