A Torah-Based Model for Sacred Order and Peace In every generation, the strength of Israel begins in the home. The bayit (household) is more than a place of dwelling — it is the first sanctuary, the smallest unit of covenant life, and the foundation of the nation. Within its walls…
“Noach was a righteous man, wholehearted in his generations; Noach walked with God.”—Bereshit 6:9 Parashat Noach confronts us with one of the Torah’s most sobering portraits of humanity. Only generations after the creation of Adam and Chavah, the human world has descended into corruption. The Torah tells us that “the…
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 begins with the most fundamental truth upon which everything else rests: God is the Creator. Before there is Abraham, before there is Israel, before Sinai, covenant, mitzvot, or the Land of Israel, there is God, creation,…
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 upon covenantal…
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 contains some of the Torah’s most difficult and frequently misunderstood laws concerning marriage, sexuality, divorce, inheritance, family responsibility, and the consequences of human desire. These commandments come to us from a social world very different from our own, yet they cannot be dismissed as irrelevant remnants of…
Parashat Ki Teitzei is one of the most mitzvah-filled portions in the Torah. Across Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19, Moshe addresses matters of family life, marriage, property, employment, agriculture, business, justice, compassion, warfare, and responsibility toward the vulnerable. The great lesson running beneath these many commandments is that Torah does not confine holiness…
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. A God who floods the world. A God whose plagues ravage a nation. Modern readers rightly ask what these…
Pikuach nefesh—the preservation of human life—is one of the most important principles of Jewish law. When a human life is genuinely endangered, nearly every commandment of the Torah may be set aside to protect that life. This is not a modern reinterpretation of Judaism, a rejection of halakhah, or an…