Tag: Jacob

  • Donkey Empathy

    This week’s Torah Portion, Mishpatim, is perhaps my favorite. Like a great standup bit, it seems to be random observations going nowhere in particular, until the final revelation. Hot off the giving of the Ten Commandments, we have a Parsha that is different from many which came before it. There are no spectacular miracles, no…

  • Heritage of Spirit

    “Most people are standing, here, with one foot in the past and one in the future,” Zater says, drawing a man on a lined notebook sheet, “But they’re looking and leaning back, like there’s a mattress against the wall in the past, and they fall into it and it bounces them forward, but they just…

  • Heritage of Spirit

    “Most people are standing, here, with one foot in the past and one in the future,” Zater says, drawing a man on a lined notebook sheet, “But they’re looking and leaning back, like there’s a mattress against the wall in the past, and they fall into it and it bounces them forward, but they just…

  • “Manning Up”

    A strange set of stories introduce us to Israel’s greatest prophet and leader in this week’s Parsha, Exodus: “It happened in those days that Moses grew up and went out to his bretheren and observed their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, from his brethren. He turned (faced) this way…