Behar-Bechukotai: Of Oil Spills and Old Covenants

May 8, 2010 Irwin Keller

He asked me why the people didn't believe Noah when he told them that it would rain until they were destroyed by flood. (After all, according to our sages, Noah took 120 years to build the ark, giving the people around him plenty of time to repent. But they scoffed at him.) My cousin answered the question, saying it was because they had never seen rain, since rain isn't mentioned in Torah before this point. And so they had no reason to believe a cockamamie story about water falling from the sky. This is a revealing insight. We don't believe in danger that we haven't personally experienced.

World Word Cloud

April 22, 2010 Irwin Keller

This is a doodley graphic representation of my Erev Rosh Hashanah drash created through the very clever program, Wordle. If this graphic makes you want to review the drash itself, you can just click here.

The Immensity of Absence

April 13, 2010 Irwin Keller

The answer for me and many of my generation is, I think, to learn to see the invisible. I traveled to Poland three years ago. I was prepared to see the camps, and I was moved when I saw them. But weighing much more heavily on me, and staying with me even to this moment, was the immensity of what I didn't see.

Everything I Needed to Know About Passover I Learned from Knitting

March 31, 2010 Irwin Keller

"Passover" is not only the name of our Festival of Matzot and our description of the Angel of Death's detour when approaching an Israelite home in Egypt. It is also a knitting instruction. Abbreviated passo, It involves several minute actions. You make a stitch. You follow this with another stitch. Then you reach back and grab the earlier one. You pass it over and around the more recent stitch, pull it off the needle and let it go. Then you keep knitting.

Parashat Vayikra: Reclaiming Jewish Guilt

March 21, 2010 Irwin Keller

If thy mother’s bulb burns out, and she sitteth in the dark, thou shalt not suffer her to climb the rickety stepladder with a flashlight, but verily thou shalt change the light bulb for her, yea, even without having to be asked.