Snippets

In parshat Mishpatim, as the Israelites prepare to receive the Torah, they say to Moses, "Na'aseh v'nishmah," we will do, and we will hear (Ex. 24:7). The "doing" part is pretty clear, considering the instructions about to come, but why does the text say "we will hear" after the doing? This has been a conundrum through the ages. After all, the "nishmah" part comes from the Hebrew root shin-mem-ayin, which has a meaning of far more than just the physical act of hearing. It also means to heed, to understand, to obey.  How many times have you been asked to...

Editor's Note: The "Torah cozy" described below is called a bein gavra, which means "between the people." Thank you to Mark Langer for helping. A dozen years ago, four women became adult bat mitzvah ~ banot mitzvah ~ at my synagogue, Congregation Micah. We all came to do that for different reasons... I was new to Judaism, one had a bat mitzvah as a child that was unfulfilling, one never had one, and one wanted to redo hers ~ and pick a new Hebrew name ~ because she had survived a deadly illness and wanted to rededicate herself to Judaism...

A fellow convert to Judaism, in giving his "acceptance" speech to the congregation told us about a dream he had. Seems that, in the dream, his rabbi (also my own) had put him in charge of the Hebrew letter lamed. That's a lot of responsibility. Such a beautiful letter, extending above the line (Hebrew letters are oriented to the top line rather than to the base line), graceful, curved, female almost.  Aside from its physical form, the Hebrew letter lamed is filled with meaning. The root, or shoresh, for the word lamed is actually lamed-mem-dalet; its root is inside itself....

The traditional Jewish notion of not making images comes from Exodus 20:4: "...you shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth." After all, the Israelites had, just shortly before the Ten Commandments were handed down, made themselves a golden calf to worship and couldn't be trusted not to try it again.  Certainly, through the ages, Jews regularly broke this commandment. There were even coins with various rabbis' faces on them! There were also work-arounds like micrography, making pictures...

On my first trip to Israel, to study at Pardes, I kept hearing this word mamash. My street Hebrew being pretty limited, I couldn't quite figure out what mamash means. Turns out that, like most Hebrew words, mamash can mean a lot of things. In the Talmud, it means "literally," as in the Gemara to Bava Kamma 83b, which asks why not take literally (mamash) the Torah's eye-for-an-eye rule? In modern Hebrew, mamash can also mean literally, actually, or very, depending on the context. Mamash also has the sense of reality in a tangible way. For me, as a Jewish artist,...