Shoftim POWERBOOK This week’s Torah episode is entitled ‘Shoftim’ – ‘Judges’ and indeed the focus is the establishment of the basic bureaucracy – authorized leadership, judicial matters, and the establishment of the Jewish Monarchy. The official Biblical party line in regards to Royalty is one of ambivalence – on the one hand the recognition of […]

REEH   SOULMATE   Onwards towards the Promised Land trudge Moses and the people, and the closer the land gets, the louder and longer are the anti assimilation speeches. ‘Beware’, the old leader warns the eager tribes – ‘do not be seduced by the ways of the land, by native gods, local flavors and paths […]

Ekev   GODDESS       This week in the Book of Words, secrets are hidden in plain view, covering up the Pagan history of the Hebrew Bible and the presence of the Goddess of Fertility Herself.  It somehow feels appropriate to frame this weekly Storah on the portion known as “Ekev” with a nod […]

Va’etchanan   PITCH   The swan song of Moses continues this week, as the Book of Words rolls on and the aged leader narrates the history of his people, and his own roller coaster of a journey. Standing on a mountaintop overlooking Canaan, he begins chapter 3 with a heart-wrenching plea to enter the Promised […]

THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY 39. D’varim WORD   The fifth and last book of Moses opens with his proclamation – THESE ARE THE WORDS… But this, of course, is the inadequate English translation of an original Hebrew concept that means more than merely an abstract verbal notion. In Biblical Hebrew, the same word for ‘words’ […]