Articles

Prayer and Windows: Thoughts for Parashat Noah--by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

Prayer and Windows: Thoughts for Parashat Noah

God’s instructions to Noah for building the ark include: “A light you shall make to the ark,” (Bereishith 6:16). Rashi, drawing on rabbinic tradition, offers two explanations of what this “light” was. 1) it was a window; 2) it was a precious stone.

A window provides direct light from the sun; a person inside the ark could see the skies above. A precious stone refracts light; a person inside the ark has light, but has no direct contact with the outside world.

The Fall of Kings in Tanakh and Shakespeare

The Fall of Kings in Tanakh and Shakespeare

by

Ronald S. Tauber

 

(Ronald Tauber is a graduate of Brooklyn College and Harvard Law School and has been a partner of a New York law firm and an investment bank. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Adele. He is the author of The Little Book of Jewish Celebrations. This article appears in issue 26 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.)

 

"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground

Camus, Kohelet--Shadows of Doubt and Faith--by Josh Rosenfeld

Although he actively denied the label of existentialism, the great existentialist writer and thinker Albert Camus had a great deal to teach us about the human condition. At just 44, two years before his untimely and tragic death, Camus was cited by the Nobel committee for his work to:

“illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our time... a champion of imaginative literature as a vehicle of philosophical insight and moral truth.”

Lies, Cries--Arise: Thoughts for Shemini Hag Atsereth, by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

The Psalm associated with Shemini Hag Atsereth/Simhath Torah seems to be a strange choice. It is Psalm 12, a Psalm that Martin Buber has described as a prophecy “against the generation of the lie.” The Psalmist cries out: “Help, O Lord, for the pious cease to be…They speak falsehood each with his neighbor, with flattering lip, with a double heart they speak.” The generation is led by oppressors who say “our tongue will make us mighty,” who arrogantly crush the downtrodden.