Parashat Mishpatim
Exodus 21:1-24:18

It is impossible to ignore the issue of the Torah’s acceptance of the institution of slavery. As we have noted in previous years (see Sparks for 2015, 2017, 2021), the juxtaposition of the Torah celebrating our liberation from Egyptian slavery with its opening of this week’s Torah portion with details of how to administer slavery within the newly liberated people is difficult to swallow. How can the Torah contradict Herself so sharply? And yet this question does not occupy the classic commentators of our text. It is only in modern times that the question becomes acutely troubling. A small comfort it is to recognize that the reading of the Torah always changes through the generations, affording us the opportunity to grapple with Her anew.
(more…)

Parashat B’shalah/Shabbat Shirah/Tu BiSh’vat
Exodus 13:17-17:16

“And the Almighty blessed the Seventh Day and sanctified it; for it was then that God rested from all God’s labors that the Almighty had created to do.” (Gen. 2:3)

Fast forward to our Torah reading, in which, after lying dormant for millennia, the Sabbath Day finally awakens again. How does this happen?

The Israelites have left Egypt and marched to freedom under God’s mighty protection. Leaving their Egyptian pursuers behind, they enter the open wilderness. To answer their need for sustenance God sends them “bread from heaven” (Ex. 16:4) – called “manna.” And then God explains that this heavenly gift, meant to satisfy every person’s hunger, will fall from the skies everyday – except for Shabbat. The manna will fall each day and will be edible for only that day. It cannot be hoarded for another time. But on Friday a double portion will rain down from heaven, enough for two days, and the food will not spoil, so that the Israelites can enjoy a Sabbath day of rest, their food already prepared. (more…)

Parashat Va’era
Exodus 6:2-9:35

Pharaoh’s heart is tested again and again during the chain of plagues that God inflicts upon Egypt. How strong or heavy or light will Pharaoh’s heart be? Again and again the Torah characterizes Pharaoh’s stubborn persistence to hold onto the Israelites as deriving from his hard, heavy, strengthened heart. Such strength seems to indicate not only firm resolve, but also a lack of compassion. The plagues rain down upon Egypt’s waters, dust, fields, and houses, and upon the bodies of the Egyptians themselves. But Pharaoh does not care. He will not submit. (We have often discussed this theme, a classic subject of all readers of this story.)
(more…)

Parashat Sh’mot
Exodus 1:1-6:1

With this book we begin speaking about the Jewish people as a nation. Until now we have been speaking about individuals. But now the Children of Israel are called a people “`am” for the first time. So they are called by Pharaoh, by Moses, by taskmasters, by God.

And with this shift we enter, almost imperceptibly, into a change of the nature of the voice of the Biblical Narrator. From the start of the Torah, from The Beginning, we have heard a voice of a storyteller who is not God or any identifiable being. The voice is the voice of an all-knowing narrator who can tell us what God does and thinks and says, and what everyone else says or does or wants. But the narrator is not God, or Laban or Tamar, or any other character in the story. We accept this voice naturally, for it tells us of events and personae – such as Noah or Sarah – long gone.

(more…)

Parashat Vay’hi
Genesis 47:28-50:26

As Jacob, the final Patriarch, prepares to die, he begs his son Joseph to take his body out of Egypt and bury it in the ancestral cave originally purchased by Abraham. He chooses to take his place within the mythic space – historical and imaginative – that this cave signifies. (See Sparks 2011) His consciousness of this transformative choice can be detected in the way he recalls the history of the place: “It was there that they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife; it was there that they buried Isaac and Rebecca, his wife; and it was there that I buried Leah.” (Gen. 49:31)

(more…)