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One Night Shtender, Boston, MA (2026)

10/08/2024

Do you know a teen who likes to debate? Try out for our Moot Beit Din team. The topic this year is should education be funded by gambling. For more information go to our website https://hebrewcollege.edu/programs/teen-beit-midrash/

09/06/2024

Shofetim
In the contexts of setting up a legal system, Moshe tells us,

צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדֹּף לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה
Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive. Devarim 16:20

Tzedek can mean justice but also righteousness, from which we derive the word tzedaka, charity. Professor Everet Fox translates it as equity in the context of courts. But tzedek can be elusive. We are meant to pursue it even if we cannot fully attain it. And even if we try to catch up to tzedek, sometimes it is not clear that justice is what we need to singularly pursue. Justice alone can be harsh and our tradition tells us that it needs to be tempered by other attributes. As it says in Tehillim 85:11 "Chesed, lovingkindness, and Emet, truth, met tzedek and shalom, peace, and kissed." In our pursuit of one we cannot forget the others.

Curiously, our pasuk doubles the word tzedek. Much ink has been spilled in trying to understand this because our tradition does not take words for granted and any extras beg to be interpreted. Ibn Ezra understands the double tzedek to teach us that we must pursue it whether we win or lose in court. Sanhedrin 35b says that one tzedek is for judgment and another for compromise, which we should pursue equally and which does not always yield the same result.

The 17th century Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horowitz wrote that the first tzedek is when a judge or the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish supreme court, would follow the letter of the Torah law only. He says that in the case of an emergency the king could contravene Torah law to respond to the needs of the moment—that’s the second tzedek. Jerusalem was destroyed, he adds, because the rabbis insisted on too narrow a reading of tzedek. The 18th century Hasidic master Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, wrote that the doubling reminds us that justice must always be coupled with rachamim, compassion, which we emphasize in our Rosh HaShanah prayers. Ramban explains that you should judge yourself in terms of where you have been and where you are going. Reminding us that tzedek is not limited to the courthouse but also applies in all aspects of our lives.

This week the pursuit of tzedek in all of its aspects seems out of reach. We so desperately need chesed, emet and shalom as well. When good people are murdered so viciously it can feel that we will never reach a world of any of these attributes. But just as Rabbi Tarfon said in Pirkei Avot 2:16 “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it”. So we continue to pursue justice with compassion in the midst of mourning.
Shabbat Shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia Marbach

08/30/2024

Re’eh starts with the command to see ourselves in the blessings and curses, in the food we eat and how we treat the most vulnerable among us. One of the less obvious ways of seeing in the parsha is the command to bring tithes of our harvest to the place that God will choose. Why the command to bring the tithes to the central place? Sometimes we need to be out of our comfort zones to see ourselves and others with clarity. Maybe that is why, as many commentators noted, the word re’eh, to see, is in the singular—we have to do it alone.

The Torah set up a series of tithes, the first of which went to the Kohanim and Leviim. The ma’aser sheni, the second tithe, was set up as a cycle of seven years. The first year was the shemita, sabbatical year in which the land was not worked so there was no ma’aser sheni. In years three and six the ma’aser sheni was given to the poor and in years two, four and five the food was to be eaten by the farmer in Jerusalem. The Torah specifies that if there was too much to shlep, one could sell it in one’s home town and bring the money to buy produce and animals upon arriving in Jerusalem. In contrast, other offerings like the first fruits were offered to God in the Temple and not eaten by the producers. The first act of seeing the tithes is assessing what one has and knowing that some of that, whatever the quantity, belongs to God in some way.

The 16th century Ottoman, Rabbi Moshe Alshich wrote that the journey was a practice in humility. One had to leave home where one might be inclined to believe, as we read last week:

וְאָמַרְתָּ בִּלְבָבֶךָ כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת־הַחַיִל הַזֶּה׃
“My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”
(Devarim 8:17)

Rather, pack your bags and go be in a place that is grander than your own—God’s house. Rabbi Alshich imagined that people would spend their time in Jerusalem learning Torah. But even if they spend their time feasting as the Torah suggests, they would be out of their normal routines and maybe gain some perspective on what is important. Philo of Alexandria, a first century BCE Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, describes the feeling of coming to Jerusalem “as if to some common refuge and safe asylum from the troubles of this most busy and painful life, seeking to find tranquility, and to procure a remission of and respite from those cares by which…they had been hampered and weighed down”. The ma’aser sheni trip was a way to see one’s life in perspective.

We don’t have a Temple anymore. Some people in Israel do separate out a portion of food and give away the equivalent in money. But next Monday is the beginning of the month of Elul, a time of reflection and repentance. The Hasidic tradition says that in Elul God comes out to the fields like a king surveying his lands. This is a time where we have more access to the Divine. Since we can no longer go to God’s house we should take the opportunity to see God nearby.
Shabbat shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia

08/29/2024

Teen Beit Midrash of Hebrew College has an online cohort of teens from around the country who want to learn Jewish texts and see what they mean for our lives today. Do you know a curious teen?

08/23/2024

Eikev
The weather has cooled a bit in New England this week and the crickets are slowing their song. There was a blue moon on Sunday night but we couldn’t see it because of the clouds. The corn is ripening as are the tomatoes on the vine. Parshat Eikev begins with a command of noticing.

וְהָיָה עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן אֵת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים הָאֵלֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם וְשָׁמַר ה’ אֱלֹקיךָ לְךָ אֶת־הַבְּרִית וְאֶת־הַחֶסֶד אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע לַאֲבֹתֶיךָ׃
And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your God will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your fathers:
(Devarim 7:12)

The word eikev is usually translated as consequently, as implied in this translation. Here it refers to the punishments in the previous perek. Rashi hears an echo of the word “heel”, which shares the same linguistic root. He says that the command is to keep the small mitzvot with the same care as we keep the more important ones. He warns us not to disregard them as one might something small under one’s heel. The importance of paying attention to the acts under our eikev imbues our whole reading this week. With all the great and important events happening in the world maybe the message of Eikev is to pause, notice, and if we have time, even wonder, for the duration of a footfall.

Sometimes we find comfort when we stop and notice small things. Notice each of the blessings that God will give you, Moshe says, and if we follow the rules God will bless our children and our crops and protect us from disease. The blessings of food and family are not eikev blessings, but sometimes we take even them for granted. Moshe points out that during their time in the desert their clothes and shoes did not wear out. Depending on your situation those are eikev blessings or not.

But eikev does not only pertain to our own physical or ritual wellbeing but also to how we treat others. Moshe tells us to make sure that we provide food and clothing to the widow, the orphan and the stranger. The eikev is whether we notice when the orphan has shoes and the widow has clothes and the stranger has a place to stay—and what we do about what we notice. Only then will we be creating the just society that the Torah envisions.

Shabbat Shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia Marbach

08/21/2024

The kids are home from camp. What are you doing about their Jewish education this year? Come check out Teen Beit Midrash of Hebrew College Teen Learning. We are a pluralistic, inclusive Jewish teen online and in-person community with a focus on traditional text. We have info session for the next three weeks. Find out more here: https://linktr.ee/teenbeitmidrash

# Jewishteens

08/16/2024

Va’etchanan/Shabbat Nachamu

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of comfort. Moshe tries to comfort the people by reminding them to stay true to the words of God. He reiterates the Ten Commandments and introduces the words of the Shema, which becomes the iconic prayer of the Jewish people.

In the haftorah the prophet Yishayahu also offers words of comfort. He says that Jerusalem’s punishment is over and that joy will return. We just completed three weeks of preparing for a Tisha B’Av that seemed more immediate than almost any in my memory. A day that Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, in his work Alei Shur, describes as a Moed Shel Richuk—a holiday of distance. And so it seems hard to switch to joy and comfort especially when there is so much pain and suffering.

Moshe tells the people to hold on to both the law and God’s love as their twin pillars. He reassures them that if they are steadfast in their devotion God will be with them. Even if they do stray and are exiled, God will still love them and eventually be reunited with them. For Rabbi Akiva, three centuries later, that was true as well. In one story, told in Yevamot 121a, he is shipwrecked and attributes his survival to holding onto a daf, or plank, from the ship. But daf also refers to a page of Talmud. Rabbi Akiva survived challenging times during the Roman occupation of Israel by holding onto the law.

Rabbi Akiva also held onto the love of God, sure as he was of God’s love of the Jewish people even during difficult times. Another story about him comes in Makkot 24b. He and some of his colleagues were walking in Jerusalem after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE. They saw a fox emerge from where the Holy of Holies had stood. The others cried at the sad state of affairs. But Rabbi Akiva laughed, because he saw that fox as a sign that Yishayahu’s prophecies of destruction had come true and so too he was assured the prophecies of renewal would also. Although we are told in Menachot 29 that he died a horrible death at the hands of the Romans, the Talmud there tells us that he died with the words of the Shema, of his love of God, on his lips.
Let us each find our pillar or our daf that keeps us afloat.
Shabbat Shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia Marbach

08/14/2024

Do you know a teen who is curious about Judaism and looking for Jewish community? Teen Beit Midrash of Hebrew College is now accepting new and returning students both online and in person in Newton, MA. For more information come to an info session. For details go to https://linktr.ee/teenbeitmidrash

08/09/2024

Devarim and Tisha B'Av
We always read parshat Devarim, the beginning of the last book of the Torah, on the Shabbat nearest Tisha B’Av, which begins this Monday night. Many reasons have been given for this juxtaposition. One is that the word eicha, translated as “how”, is both in Moshe’s plea to God about the burden of leadership and is the refrain of the book of Lamentations, which we read on Tisha B’Av. Both refer to our lack of understanding of the ways of God and the resulting feelings of isolation.

This year these feelings are palpable once again. After more than 300 days since the hostages were taken and the Middle East on tenterhooks amidst a brutal war, the question of eicha, or how, we got here reverberates loudly.

In our parsha Moshe begins his farewell speech by recalling when he asked God,

אֵיכָה אֶשָּׂא לְבַדִּי טׇרְחֲכֶם וּמַשַּׂאֲכֶם וְרִיבְכֶם׃
How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering! (Devarim 1:12)

In Moshe’s question we feel loneliness, as if he felt isolated and friendless at that moment. In the following pasuk he remembered that his solution was to appoint advisors. God had approved this decision. And yet the experience was significant enough to Moshe that he began his final speech to the people with that memory and not with the highlights of his time as a leader. One might have thought that leading the people from Egypt or receiving the Torah at Sinai would be the most important events, but the Torah teaches us here that it was in fact the loneliness and fear that felt more salient to him.

The eicha of Lamentations is also a cry of loneliness. How could God abandon us in a time of trouble and leave us to the cruelty of our enemies? The stories of the period leading up to the destruction of the Temple are told in the tractate of the Talmud dealing with divorce. By telling these stories there the Rabbis were emphasizing the breakdown that the destruction meant to them, as if God was divorcing them. The accounts told there, in Masechet Gittin, are all about people who are isolated in some way and so suffer, or cause others to suffer. Bar Kamza was disinvited from a party to which he was mistakenly invited, but when none of the others at the party stood up for him, including the rabbis, he betrayed his people to the Roman authorities. Later rabbis, in Gittin 56a, say that the Temple was destroyed because of him. Perhaps it wasn’t his actions but his isolation from the community that led to the destruction.

There is another story related to the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple told in Sanhedrin 104b about a woman who lost her son and would cry over him every night. The great Rabban Gamliel, who lived nearby, cried with her until his eyelashes fell out. His students wanted to remove her from the neighborhood so their teacher could sleep. Liora Eilon, a contemporary Israeli midrash writer and survivor of the October 7th attack on Kfar Aza, reinterprets the students’ impetus to take the woman out. Eilon says that they wanted her crying not to be insolation but to “trumpet it to the world” because, she says, only when we all weep together do we find solace.

I sat shiva for my father 23 years ago this week. Traditionally during the seven days of shiva the mourners do not leave their house and the community come to them to offer consolation. But when Tisha B’Av falls during a shiva, the rule is that the mourners do leave and join the mourning of the community. Years ago the stories of the destruction helped me to cry for my father as well. And being consoled by people who knew my father helped me not feel the isolation as acutely as Moshe who carried with him so many years later. Everyone mourns differently but the Jewish way is to do so together.

Shabbat Shalom with love Rabba Claudia Marbach

06/14/2024

Naso
I recently read an article in the New Yorker about the conviction of an English neonatal nurse named Lucy Letby who was convicted of murdering many babies in her care. Letby maintains her innocence. Rachel Aviv, the author of the article, argues that although Letby was on duty when the babies died, correlation does not spell causation. Aviv asserts that the statistics used to convict Letby, after a ten month trial, were shoddy and that many people were more interested in accusing Letby than examining the flaws in the National Health system’s funding and care. But most interesting, to me, was that once people started accusing the nurse of misbehavior, the more people saw malfeasance. Whether or not the accusations are true, the young nurse experienced public humiliation, psychological trauma and will probably spend the rest of her life in prison.

This story reminded me of the sotah system in our parsha, which allows a jealous husband to subject his wife to a trial by ordeal if he suspects her of adultery. After being publicly humiliated she was made to drink water which contained the ink from a scroll on which the name of God had been written. If she were guilty, her belly would distend and thighs would sag, which was probably a euphemism for some failure of her sexual organs (Bamidbar 5:22). If she were innocent she would soon become pregnant and her husband could never divorce her. According to the Talmud the ritual included a kohen partially stripping her and shaming her even before she drank the water. Even if she was innocent, she had to endure the ordeal. Curiously, the description of the sotah follows a verse that admonishes both men and women to take responsibility for the wrongs against each other stating that such offenses are “a breaking faith with God” (Bamidbar 5:6). Like nurse Letby, the sotah was punished even before her trial began.

The scholar Jacob Milgrom says that the sotah ritual was probably adopted from surrounding cultures to prevent the lynching of suspected adulterors. But it is not clear how often it was practiced. Mishnah Eduyot 5:6 quotes Rabbi Akavia ben Mahalalel, who lived in the early first century CE, in saying that the sotah ritual did not apply to converts or freed slaves. Contemporary rabbis disagreed, citing a case of a woman named Karkemit who was made to drink the waters by Shemaiah and Avtalion, great rabbis who lived a century before. Akavia ben Mahalalel asserted that that case had been just for show and was just plain water. The rabbis showed their disagreement by excommunicating him. Was Karkemit the last sotah? In Mishnah Sotah 9:9 Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who lived fifty years later, maintained that the ritual was discontinued because “adulterers proliferated” but it is not clear when that occurred.

Whether or not sotah was ever enacted, vilifying women to avoid accountability is an ancient practice that persists today. The Mishnah Sotah 5:1 says that “just as the water evaluates her fidelity, so too, the water evaluates his”. Maybe we read about sotah every year to remind us that we have to examine all sides more carefully to get closer to justice and not ruin women’s lives with innuendos that, repeated enough, come to be believed.
Shabbat shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia Marbach

05/31/2024

Bechukotai

Many people I know got married this past weekend. On the Jewish calendar, Sunday was Lag B’omer, a time when Jews finish a time of semi-mourning recalling the end of a plague that killed many of the students of Rabbi Akiva in the 3rd century CE. This year Lag B’omer overlapped with Memorial Day, another day that is mourning for some in America and the start of summer for others. Our parsha combines this feeling of happy and sad times. God enumerates the good things that will happen to the people if they follow the mitzvot and the bad things that will ensue if they do not. At the nuptial I attended, a friend had a good take I’d like to share with you this Friday.

You might think that this is a terrible parasha for a wedding, said my friend. Most of the reading is the tochacha, the string of rebukes or curses that are so demoralizing that they are whispered quickly. Quite the opposite—this parasha is about the relationship between God and Bnei Yisrael. The reading begins with the blessings that come if Bnei Yisrael nurtures and maintains the relationship. For a marriage to work, opined my friend, one needs to prioritize the relationship, to pay attention to the other’s needs and to respect the covenant. The rebukes only come when Bnei Yisrael fails to prioritize the relationship. The Rabbis in Bava Batra 88b say, perhaps with hope, that there are twenty-two blessings and only eight curses. The way forward through the bad times is by going through together. Return to the good times by returning to each other.

Many of us understand that idea in terms of human relationship but how do we do that with God? The blessings promised include peace, fertility and plenty. It feels hard now when we seem to be on the receiving end of some of the curses detailed this week. Especially where the Torah says that our children shall be bereaved and the roads deserted. Even in exile, we will not feel safe as the curses continue. The theology of Bechukotai is difficult.

The Rabbis put the stories of exile and the destruction of the Second Temple in the tractate of Talmud on the laws of divorce, as if to say that its physical breakdown signified that the relationship between God and the Jewish people was over. But that was not God’s promise. The section of curses ends with God saying that even with all the promised fury, the relationship is still there; that covenant forged with our ancestors is still binding. Curiously the Torah lists the forefathers in reverse chronological order, as if to make sure we are reading and paying attention to the details of this relationship.

Similarly, our calendar has a way of redirecting us. In a week and a half we will celebrate Shavuot, which commemorates the covenant that we made with God at Sinai. With our synagogues dressed in flowers for the renewing of the nuptials, hopefully we can reach back and find those old romantic feelings.
Shabbat shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia Marbach

05/17/2024

Tucked in at the very end of our parsha is a disturbing and enigmatic story. We are told that the son of an Egyptian man and a Jewish woman goes out among the people and gets in a fight. He curses God, is arrested and brought to Moshe for punishment. God tells Moshe that the leaders of the people should stone the man, but also reminds Moshe of the need for justice and fairness among the people. This story leaves me with a lot of questions. I find it strange that the perpetrator is not given a name but his mother, grandfather and their tribe are. Why is it noteworthy that his father was Egyptian? We are not told what the fight was about and who started it, was he provoked or out looking for a brawl? In the book A Bride for a Night, Ruth Calderon creatively imagines the back stories of little narratives like this in the Talmud. In that spirit, I am curious to investigate more.

Often when the Torah uses the verb vayetze, he went out, with which our story begins, the story will not end well. Where is he going? The Midrash tells us that he and his mother had pitched their tent in the area assigned to the tribe of Dan because his mother was from the tribe of Dan. The people of Dan objected to the matrilineal affiliation since tribal membership only went through the father. They may have been right but then they were not compassionate. As Rabbi Sharon Brous wrote in her book The Amen Effect, “A society devoid of empathy is at great risk of falling into patterns of dehumanization.” His reaction to this rejection was to curse God. This may not have been a good choice and it certainly was not one which the society could accept.

An alternative to the rejection narrative, Vayikra Rabbah identifies this man’s father as the taskmaster whom Moshe had killed in Egypt. The Midrash accuses the taskmaster for ra**ng or seducing the blasphemer’s mother after sending her Jewish husband off to work for the day. When Moshe witnessed the satisfied taskmaster emerging from her house he killed him. The Midrash seems to imply that if the mother was willing or forced to reject the bonds of marriage it might not be surprising for her son to reject bonds with God.

Rabbanit Dr. Michal Tikochinsky, a contemporary Israeli scholar, reads the story more critically. She said that the story comes to teach us the price for alienating the poor and oppressed. Maybe like his great aunt Dina, he went out to find some friends. Upon meeting people he might introduce himself as Shlomit bat Divri’s son. His mother’s name means peace; perhaps he learned that from her. When he was met with contempt he pushed back or maybe a bully picked a fight. Then all of the name calling about his mother and humiliation boiled over which was when he cursed God. Or maybe, as Rabbi Nelly Altenburger suggests, he tried to use God’s name to kill his adversary. When God was used as a tool, God had to take action. If the people could have solved the situation with compassion they could have saved his life.
Shabbat Shalom with love,
Rabba Claudia Marbach

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