WHO WE REALLY ARE
Why This Year’s Shavuot Is One of the Most Important Ever: Moshe Hauer, Algemeiner, June 10, 2024 — Beginning Tuesday evening, June 11, Jews all over the world celebrate Shavuot and commemorate the day they received the Torah and its commandments at Sinai.
Land or Torah: What Binds Israel as a Nation?: Dr. Tzvi Novick, The Torah.com, May 27, 2020
Shavuot – The Democratization of Knowledge: Jeffrey Levine, The Times of Israel, June 9, 2024
“Wherever You Go, I Will Go”: Reading Ruth 1:16-17: Leon Kass and Hannah Mandelbaum, Jewish Review of Books, May 11, 2021
From the Book of Ruth to Swords of Iron: Malkhut in Our Time: Sarah, The Book of Books, June 3, 2024
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For Further Reference:
A Shavuot Guide for the Perplexed: Yoram Ettinger, Algemeiner, June 3, 2024 — Shavuot is one of the three Jewish liberty-oriented pilgrimages to Jerusalem (Passover, Shavuot, and Tabernacles).
Israel Was Instructed to Ascend Sinai, But Were Afraid of Revelation: Hila Hershkoviz, The Torah.com, June 9, 2024 — After the Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai, Moses ascends the mountain. YHWH instructs him to tell the people that YHWH will form a covenant with them and the people accept it (Exod 19:1–8a).
Podcast: Andrew Doran on Why He Thinks the Roots of Civilization Are Jewish: Mosaic Magazine, May 31, 2024 — Traditional readers of the Hebrew Bible, reinforced by rabbinic commentary, condemn the bloodlust, cruelty, exploitation of the weak, and exaltation of the strong that is on display in the Amalekite attack on Israel in the book of Exodus. But it’s not the Amalekites, the nomadic enemies of the Israelites, who are shocking for their senseless violence; it’s the Israelites who are shocking for their ability to quiet that darker, natural impulse, and live out a different moral code.
LISTEN: Understanding the Jewish Romance with the Law: Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, Mosaic Magazine, June 11, 2019 — Psalm 19 states that “the precepts of the Lord are just, bringing joy to the heart; . . . the laws of the Lord are true, righteous altogether, more desirable than gold, than much fine gold; sweeter than honey, than drippings of the comb.”
