As we begin Torah anew with the Book of Genesis, this week’s daily kavanot will each focus on one of the five books. This is an invitation to stop, to reflect, and to get a taste of our most sacred text. Traditionally, young boys (for it was/is only boys in this case) would begin their studies with the Book of Leviticus. A little bit of honey would be placed on the first page of their book, an assurance that the study of Torah would always be sweet. It is not necessarily where I would start a group of learners—at any age. Book of Leviticus is perhaps the most challenging, with its emphasis on blood and guts and sacrifice, the intricate laws of the Levitical priests, the almost obsessive details of boundaries and borders—what is permitted and what is not. And yet, right in the middle of the Book of Leviticus, [...]

As we begin Torah anew with the Book of Genesis, this week’s daily kavanot will each focus on one of the five books. This is an invitation to stop, to reflect, and to get a taste of our most sacred text. If I did not already know it, my attempts to belt “Me and Bobby McGee” at pretty much any opportunity are a good reminder that I am no Janis Joplin. But, belt it I continue to do! “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” she cries in a love story that isn’t. “Nothing don’t mean nothin’ if it ain’t free.” Freedom, of course, is the central theme of the Book of Exodus—the book that begins in slavery and ends in freedom, begins in degradation and ends in praise, begins in darkness and ends in light. Freedom, for our sacred text and perhaps for us, is not another [...]

As we begin Torah anew with the Book of Genesis, this week’s daily kavanot will each focus on one of the five books. This is an invitation to stop, to reflect, and to get a  taste of our most sacred text. Recently, writing about a particular section of the Talmud for MyJewishLearning.com, I had the chance to reflect on the trend of American individualism—the phenomenon, coined 20 years ago by Robert Putnam, of Bowling Alone. Speaking about “social capital,” he notes that it “refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.” More importantly, he describes the sorts of social connections that lead to social goods—we are stronger together, even as we live more and more apart. The Book of Genesis is by no means a narrative of healthy social relationships. In fact, we might argue it describes the opposite. A family drama full of fratricide (both attempted [...]