JVOICES.COM

A video about JVoices’s contributor Rabbi Capers Funnye and Beth Shalom synagogue in Chicago, IL.

Judges! We are instructed to appoint wise and honorable judges to administer justice. (Samson is the most famous exception to that rule.) They are to judge blindly and be unbribable. Crimes are to be thoroughly investigated and convictions require at least two witnesses.
We are again instructed to commit ethnic [...]

It’s Sesame Street in Canaan! Blue skies, rolling hills, brooks, fountains - Oy! All we have to do is expel the people who live there and all good gifts will be handed to us. Did I hear somebody say, “We’ll be welcomed as liberators?” This parsha also warns us that YHWH’s affection for us arises [...]

Moses continues his trip down memory lane. He remembers some of Judaism’s big hits, including the Ten Commandments and the Shema. He also continues tutoring his younger charges in the finer points of ethnic cleansing; he tells them that they’ll enjoy homes they did not build and vineyards they did not plant. The portion ends [...]

Brandeis University is whence we deliver this week’s comic. We are studying the ancient art of the Torah Maven with Amichai Lau Lavie and the Storahtellers. Our training is why this week’s comic is a one-pager.
This begins the fifth and final book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, so we decided to tell one [...]

This week’s comic is a resend of last year’s Matot-Massei. Aaron piloted our tandem bike onto a gravelly curb and Sharon needed 7 stitches in her drawing hand. She’ll theoretically be back in the pink next week.
Meanwhile, this week’s parsha is maybe the most horrible in the Torah. We get the divine rules for genocide [...]

Divorce, Divine-Style
YHWH, ever the violence fan, waxes romantic over Her latest fave murderer, Pinchas. Then She lays out, in significant detail, Her rules for inheritance and tells Moses to make sure they are carried out justly. Hearing that HE is assigned the task, Moses gets all excited thinking maybe YHWH has changed Her mind and [...]

This is a parsha of contradictions. Balak, king of Moab, fears the Egyptian Hebrews and seeks help from the powerful prophet, Balaam. YHWH goes back and forth as to whether or not Balaam can go to Moab. He finally goes and (according to some rabbis) tries to curse the Hebrews, but is only able to [...]

Zeus, king of the Greek gods, was not mentioned in this week’s parsha, though the Greeks did, for a time, occupy Palestine. His appearance as YHWH’s confessor is a device to let us put words in her mouth about how she might have felt about this week’s shocking turnaround in her relationship with Moses. [...]