Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

We tend to think of “folk music” as music with no known composer that arises spontaneously out of a culture and that is passed down orally from one generation to another. The Hebrew song, “Eretz Zavat Chalav U-Devash” is one such folk song. The four words that compromise the lyrics of this song are first…

At the end of this week’s parsha we have the commandment to make fringes on our garments, called “tsitsit”. The tsitsit are placed on the corners of our prayer shawl. Most of us wear this prayer shawl when we attend morning services. It is customary to recite this biblical passage as the third paragraph of…

Our Torah reading for this week opens with God telling Moses to instruct Aaron on the lighting of the seven branched menorah. The text continues, “Aaron did so….” The sage Rashi comments on this text. “This verse comes to praise Aaron that he did not change.” What does Rashi mean, “That he did not change”?…

Last week we began reading the fourth of the Five Books of Moses in our synagogues. In Hebrew we call the book “Ba-midbar” which means “In the Wilderness” because the book opens with the verse, “God spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai”. In English we call the book “The Book of Numbers” because…

The sage Hillel had a saying, recorded for posterity in Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers: Be like the disciples of Aaron, love peace and pursue peace, love people (habriut) and bring them close to the Torah. In his commentary on Pirke Avot, Avigdor Shinar, Professor emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, asks…

In this week’s Torah reading, Aaron and his four sons are ordained as be priests. This must have been a glorious day for them, and for Aaron’s wife, who no doubt was bursting with pride to see her husband and sons take up the mantle of religious leadership for the People of Israel. But suddenly,…

Jewish tradition encourages the study of Pirke Avot on Sabbath afternoons in the Spring and the Summer. As meteorological spring is here and hopefully the weather will soon become warmer (it was 35 degrees when I awoke this morning) I share a teaching (Chapter 1, Mishna 5) that will, I hope, encourage you to study…

Our Torah reading for this week which opens the Book of Leviticus, begins “He called to Moses”. That is an unusual beginning to a verse. The “He” in the verse is anonymous. In the words of Leonard Cohen, “Who should I say is calling?” There is another unusual feature of this opening verse. The final…

On the Sabbath it is not permitted to carry from inside the home to the outside of the home, or from the outside of the home to the inside of the home, without setting an “eruv”, a boundary set before Shabbat that allows one to carry within its domain. In keeping with this restriction, the…

In Parasha Ki Tissa the instructions to build the mishkan are immediately followed by six verses on keeping the Sabbath. The latter three verses are our well known “Veshamru” prayer that we recite on Friday night and at Kiddush on Shabbat morning. But the second verse has a curious word introducing a phrase. Instead of…