Bereshit 6:9 – “Noach was a righteous man, blameless in his generations; Noach walked with God.” The story of Noach is both ancient and timeless. On its surface, it speaks of a great flood, divine judgment, and survival. Yet beneath the surface, it tells a deeper story about conscience, faith,…
I am often asked why I speak and write so openly about the subject of plural marriage in the Torah. Why, in an age that worships individualism and mocks ancient virtue, would anyone still concern themselves with a practice so out of step with modern ideals?The answer is not desire,…
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” (Bereshit 1:1) The Torah opens not with a commandment or a covenant, but with a story — the story of creation. Before Israel was chosen, before Torah was given, before there was a people or a land, there was the…
1. Introduction The presumption that monogamy is the divinely ordained and exclusively moral form of marriage within “Judeo-Christian” civilization has become so ingrained that few pause to ask how such an assumption arose. The Hebrew Scriptures present no divine injunction limiting a man to one wife. The Torah’s emphasis lies…
When people picture the Old West, they usually summon a narrow pantheon: trail hands silhouetted against a red horizon, laconic sheriffs with tin badges, outlaws fading into canyons of dust. What slips the frame is how many other hands helped build that world—and among them were Jews, men and women…
Parashat Ki Teitzei (Deut 21:10–25:19) contains more laws than any other Torah portion, and a striking number touch marriage—who may marry whom, how marriages begin and end, what protections the vulnerable receive, and how a household is to be established in joy. Read together, these laws form a moral program:…
This Shabbat—September 6, 2025 / 13 Elul 5785—we read Ki Teitzei (Deut. 21:10–25:19), a portion overflowing with ordinary, lived mitzvot. It is famously dense because Torah refuses to confine holiness to rare moments or sacred rooms; it insists that holiness belongs in fields and workshops, kitchens and marketplaces, marriage and…
Akedah (Gen 22), hardening Pharaoh’s heart (Exod 7–11), the Flood (Gen 6–9), and the plagues—read in a Netzarim key Some of Torah’s most famous scenes are also its most unsettling. A God who tests a father with the command to sacrifice his son. A God who “hardens” a tyrant’s heart.…
Pikuach nefesh (פיקוח נפש) is the Jewish conviction that safeguarding human life takes precedence over nearly every other commandment. In Netzarim Judaism—where halakhah is anchored first in the plain sense of the Tanakh and guided by an informed conscience—this is not a loophole or an emergency escape hatch. It is…
Parashat Shoftim opens with a command that plants justice at the very threshold of daily life: “Appoint judges and officers for yourself in all your gates” (Deut. 16:18). Not only must Israel have courts; every community, at every gate, must carry the burden of fair process, clean leadership, and public…