Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Our Torah reading for this week includes the plague of darkness — “a darkness that can be touched”. (Exodus 10:21). What is “a darkness that can be touched”? The Seforno writes that God removed the natural darkness of the night and replaced it with the kind of darkness that cannot be expelled by the presence…

Beginning on Sunday morning, January 7, I will be teaching a weekly Parsha Ha-Shavua class via Zoom, sponsored by Temple Beth El of Springfield, Massachusetts. The first session will focus on Parashat Vaera, in which God “hardens Pharaoh’s heart.” If Judaism holds that we have free will, how can God deprive Pharaoh of his choice?…

In this week’s Torah reading, (Gen 47:28) Jacob is about to die. He asks his son Joseph to make him a promise — to bury him with his father and grandfather in the Land of Canaan. “Do me this favor…. as a pledge of chesed va-emet …. take me up from Egypt and bury me…

This week we come to the climax of the Joseph story. Joseph has framed his brother Benjamin and threatens to enslave him in Egypt while allowing the other brothers to return to their father, Jacob, in Canaan. In the next 32 verses Judah delivers a passionate speech culminating in the plea to allow him take…

In our parsha for this week, Miketz, Pharoah has two dreams and calls for his wise men and his magicians to interpret them. After they can offer no solution to the dreams, Pharoah’s cupbearer remembers that Joseph, a young man he met when he was in prison, had interpreted the different dreams of him and…

In Parasha Vayishlakh, Jacob wrestles with “a man”, often identified as the guardian angel of his brother, Esau. Earlier in the story, when Jacob is told that his brother Esav is approaching “with four hundred men” Jacob is described as fearful and anxious. Here, however, Jacob does not appear to be afraid. Rather, he marshals…

Even though I am a Rabbi, everybody in my family does not have the same idea about God. Some of us believe in a personal God, others believe in God as an abstract force in the universe, still others do not profess a belief in God at all. I found this brief story retold by…

On Tuesday I traveled to Washington DC to participate in in the March for Israel on the National Mall. I returned home with the two posters pictured above. We placed them in our front window. We live in a small condominium community of about 30 units, so we do not have many passers-bye. Who was…

One of the most painful parts of this painful period of time is the kidnapping of 240 men, women, and children by Hamas on October 7. The youngest of them turned 10 months old in captivity! Pictures of these captives, posted on light poles and buildings in cities and on campuses across the United States,…