Tag Archives: Bible

Two Sets of Books

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This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, contains a commandment that sounds remarkably modern:

“Thou shalt not have in thy bag diverse weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thy house diverse measures, a great and a small.” –Deuteronomy 25:13–14

The Torah is describing an ancient marketplace. A merchant cannot keep one weight for buying and another for selling, choosing whichever benefits him.

These spool-shaped weights from Tiryns, in Bronze Age Greece, weighed about the same as their counterparts in other parts of Europe and the Middle East.

But the commandment reaches far beyond stones and scales. It is about maintaining two versions of the truth.

Today, the second weight might be a spreadsheet, a rent roll, an appraisal, a tax return or a loan application. It might be one set of books showing how a business is actually performing and another presented to the bank. It might even be one transaction reflecting what was actually paid for a property and another showing the lender a different price.

The technology changes. The commandment does not.

That message has become uncomfortable in light of recent financial fraud cases involving members of Orthodox Jewish communities. The Real Deal has documented mortgage schemes involving inflated financial statements, false rents and properties represented at different transaction prices to lenders.

But those cases are only a contemporary illustration of a problem the Torah identified thousands of years ago.

“A perfect and just weight shalt thou have; a perfect and just measure shalt thou have” – Deuteronomy 25:15

The word “perfect” matters. Judaism demands extraordinary precision. We measure the dimensions of a sukkah. We calculate when Shabbat begins and ends. We examine the letters of a Torah scroll and mezuzah. We measure matzah and wine.

The Torah demands that same precision in business.

An observant Jew cannot be meticulous about measurements in the synagogue and casual about numbers in the office. An accurate set of books is also an expression of religious observance. So is an honest closing statement. So is giving the bank the same numbers that describe the actual business.

Perhaps that is why the Torah says not merely that we should not use two different weights. It says we should not have them. Neither outside the home nor inside.

Do not create the second ledger. Do not prepare the alternate transaction. Do not keep a different measure available for when it becomes convenient.

The Torah then uses unusually strong language:

“For all that do such things, even all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.” – Deuteronomy 25:16

There is no exemption because everyone does it, because the bank can afford it, because the loan will probably be repaid or because manipulating the numbers has become customary.

Ki Teitzei offers a simple accounting principle for a complicated financial world: integrity.

The Torah does not ask whether the numbers balance. It demands that they are true.

Justice Must Be Blind

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Everyone wants justice.

Protesters demand it. Politicians promise it. Journalists expose its absence. Nations wage wars in its name. Even terrorists describe their violence as justice.

Perhaps that is why this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, does not simply command “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” First comes a warning:

“You shall not pervert judgment; you shall not recognize faces.” – Deuteronomy 16:19

Lo takir panim. Do not recognize faces. The biblical commentator Rashi explains that “this is an admonition addressed to the judge that he should not be lenient to one and harsh to the other, e.g. letting one stand and the other sit; because as soon as he (the party treated harshly) observes that the judge shows more respect to his fellow his ability to plead is hampered (i.e. he loses self-confidence and cannot present his case with assurance) (cf. Shevuot 30a).”

Justice becomes corrupted when we look first at who stands before us and only afterward decide how to judge what happened.

Was the attacker powerful or weak? Majority or minority? Progressive or conservative? Do we admire the cause or despise it?

Sometimes the distortion comes from empathy. Suffering naturally draws us toward the person in pain. But compassion can obscure how the suffering began, what that person did, or what they intend to do next. Empathy is a human instinct. It is not a verdict.

Once we recognize the face, an attack can become “resistance.” A defeat becomes an injustice. The suffering of an aggressor eclipses the aggression that produced it. Terrorism becomes “liberation,” and “peace” only has relevance for one party.

Shoftim understands that the greatest threat to judgment can come from the judge himself. Human beings have an extraordinary ability to bend principles around the people before them.

Erase the faces. Reverse the identities.

If the nationalities were switched, would you reach the same judgment? If the religion were different, would you excuse the same violence? If people you admire committed the act you condemn, would you still condemn it?

If the verdict changes when the faces change, the principle was never really the principle.

The first justice is judging the act. The second is judging ourselves—whether we would render the same verdict after changing the faces.

From Good and Evil to Blessing and Curse

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We normally think about free will as a choice between good and evil. Do the right thing or the wrong thing.

But that is not how Moses presents the choice at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Re’eh.

“See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” – Deuteronomy 11:26

Good and evil describe the choice we make. Blessing and curse describe what comes from that choice.

The language takes us back to the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve ate from it, acquiring the moral awareness that would define humanity: the ability to recognize alternatives and choose between them.

It was an extraordinary power. Alone, it was insufficient.

The Bible soon becomes a history of choices and their consequences. Cain murders Abel. Humanity descends into the violence preceding the Flood. Babel rebels and is scattered. Sodom becomes corrupt and is destroyed.

People possess knowledge of good and evil, but God still delivers the judgments. Humanity acts; God determines the consequences.

Sinai changes the dynamic. Israel receives commandments revealing a divine framework for how to live. The knowledge acquired in Eden is now joined to God’s instruction about how that knowledge should be applied.

And in Re’eh, something more happens.

Moses is speaking to the Israelites as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. They know the commandments. They know what God expects. And now blessing and curse are given a physical location. When they cross the Jordan, the blessing is to be pronounced on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.

Archaeological site on Mount Gerizim

The consequences of human choice that had unfolded across the world in Genesis are now brought home. They will be proclaimed on two mountains in the land where the Israelites themselves will live.

That gives Re’eh — “See” — added force.

See the choices before you. See the commandments that guide them. And now, quite literally, see where their consequences will reside.

In Eden, humanity acquired the knowledge of good and evil. At Sinai, Israel received a framework for choosing. And upon entering the Promised Land, blessing and curse would be placed before them on the very mountains of their new home.

The lesson was no longer abstract.

They knew good and evil. They had been given the commandments. And now, in their own land, they would live with the consequences of their choices.

The Manna Was Never About Bread

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One of the most quoted verses in this week’s parashah, Eikev, is also one of its most misunderstood.

“He humbled you, made you hungry, and fed you with the manna… to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)

Of course we live by bread. Without food, we die. So what was Moses teaching?

Perhaps the answer begins with a forgotten detail. When the Israelites left Egypt, they did not leave destitute. The Torah says they departed with gold, silver—and large flocks and herds.

Flock in the area known as “E1” just east of Jerusalem (photo: First One Through

If they already possessed wealth, why were they hungry? They had plenty of cattle to satisfy their needs.

Perhaps God was interrupting a dangerous transition.

In Egypt, Israel depended on Pharaoh. After the Exodus, they could have concluded, Now we provide for ourselves. We have the means, we are self-sufficient. But alas, God “made you hungry.”

For what purpose?

Had Israel been sated with eating meat for their entire sojourn in the desert, they might have entered the Promised Land having consumed much of its productive wealth. Instead, God preserved those assets by first making them less appealing, and then supplying a substitute for their daily needs.

Read this way, the manna was both sustenance and strategy.

That sheds new light on Moses’ warning just a few verses later:

“Beware lest you say, ‘My power and the might of my hand have made me this wealth.'” (Deuteronomy 8:7)

That wealth would had been long decimated without the daily manna.

The point of the manna was both the immediate sustenance and the vehicle with which to preserve future sustenance (the cattle). And it was God who gave the manna to not just keep people alive, but to position the nation to succeed in the future in the Promised Land.

The same is true today.

We need jobs, businesses, investments, and income. Eikev asks us to appreciate the means of our immediate livelihood, future savings and the source for both.

God was not preparing Israel for perpetual dependence. He was preparing them for covenantal partnership. Today and tomorrow.

Consider the lesser known phrase of “He made you hungry” rather than “man does not live by bread alone,” to appreciate the gifts of today and what it enables tomorrow.

From Tisha B’Av to the Shema

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Every year, just days after Tisha B’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples, comes Shabbat Nachamu—the Sabbath of Consolation. The haftarah opens with God’s promise: “Comfort, comfort My people.” And the Torah portion is always Va’etchanan, containing perhaps the most important words in Judaism:

Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad. – Deuteronomy 6:4

The timing is remarkable.

The parasha begins with one of the Torah’s most poignant moments. Moses pleads to enter the Promised Land, but God refuses. He will see the Land from afar, yet die alone on the eastern bank of the Jordan, separated from both the land he longed to enter and the people who would continue without him. Rather than dwell on what he has lost, Moses spends his final days giving Israel what can never be taken away.

Just after today’s Jews remember what was destroyed on Tisha B’Av, the Torah turns to the covenant between God and the Jewish people.

The Shema is recited every morning upon waking and every evening before sleep, fulfilling the Torah’s command to speak these words “when you lie down and when you rise.” Many Jews have long sought to make it their final words before death. The Shema frames a Jewish life—from its first waking moments to its final conscious breath.

Before reciting its opening verse, Jews traditionally cover their eyes.

One explanation is that removing visual distractions allows the words to be heard more completely. But perhaps the custom also captures something about the moment itself.

With eyes covered, we become vulnerable. For an instant we stand alone, unable to rely on what we can see. It is precisely then that we declare: Hashem Echad—the Lord is One.

Not better than another. Not merely the only God. Simply One: singular, indivisible.

At that moment, the person saying the Shema also stands as one—alone before the One. The moment becomes a deeply personal connection; in Genesis, created in the image of God, and today, retiring together with God.

That may be the deepest consolation after Tisha B’Av.

Enormous empires destroyed the Temple and powerful armies scattered the Jewish people. Yet they could not destroy the simple words Moses taught. They are still whispered every morning, every night, before sleep and, if blessed, with a final breath.

Judaism is designed to be a humble faith, one in which individuals know that their God is not only there to empower them when they need to fight, but console them when they are bereft and alone.

Shabbat Nachamu reminds us that consolation does not begin with rebuilt stones or a visit to Moses’ gravesite. It begins with a people who still know they can close their eyes and connect with God as they say Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.

Every Generation Has a Jordan River

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Every graduation marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

Parshat Devarim, read each year during the Nine Days before Tisha B’Av, opens at precisely such a moment. The Jewish people stand on the banks of the Jordan River. After forty years in the wilderness, they are finally ready to enter the Land of Israel. Moses is delivering his final address. One might expect him to unveil a military strategy, an economic vision, or a blueprint for nation-building.

Instead, he teaches history.

For three chapters, Moses reviews the defining moments of the previous forty years: the appointment of judges, the sin of the spies, the years of wandering, and the victories over Sihon and Og. This is not nostalgia but preparation. Before Israel can build its future, it must first understand its past.

Moses sees the promised land from afar, 1902 by James Tissot (1836-1902)

That lesson feels especially relevant for this year’s Jewish college graduates.

Like the Israelites, they are crossing into a new world. They are leaving the structured environment of school and entering workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities where they will make their own decisions and assume new responsibilities.

The past few years have given many Jewish students an education that extended far beyond the classroom. They witnessed campuses wrestle with antisemitism. They watched administrators make revealing choices. They saw professors, classmates, elected officials, employers, and civic leaders respond in different ways when Jewish students felt threatened or isolated.

Whether those responses inspired confidence or disappointment, they were lessons.

Moses understood that the moments just before entering a new chapter are precisely when history matters most. The question is not simply, What happened? It is, What have you learned that should shape the future you are about to build?

For today’s graduates, those lessons should inform more than career decisions. They should influence how they participate in civic and Jewish life.

  • Who has earned your trust through actions rather than slogans?
  • Which institutions proved resilient under pressure?
  • How will you respond if antisemitism appears in your workplace?
  • What kind of community do you want to help build?

Graduation should also mark the beginning of Jewish adulthood. That means becoming more than an occasional participant. Join a synagogue by becoming a dues-paying member. Vote in local, state, and national elections. Volunteer and mentor younger students. Strengthen the institutions that strengthened you, and build the ones you wished had existed.

The Jewish calendar reinforces this idea. Before we reach the season of renewal – before Elul, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur – we pause for the Nine Days and Tisha B’Av. Before looking ahead, we look back. Before rebuilding, we reflect.

That is exactly what Moses was doing on the edge of the Jordan.

Every generation has its own Jordan River.

Before crossing into tomorrow, Moses offers one final piece of advice: study yesterday. Not to dwell on it, but to be equipped by it. History is not simply something to remember. It is something to carry forward as you begin writing the next chapter of your own story – and of the Jewish people.

Leave the Corner of Your Workweek

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As the Israelites prepare to enter the Land of Israel in Matot-Masei, the tribes of Reuben and Gad ask for permission to settle east of the Jordan. Moses agrees – but with one condition. They may not enjoy the security of their own homes until they first help the other tribes secure theirs.

The message is striking. Before you settle comfortably into your own inheritance, help your community establish theirs. It is not charity but community responsibility.

Every tribe had a rightful place in the land. Every family deserved the opportunity to build a secure home. The community could not be considered settled until everyone had the chance to settle.

Thousands of years later, most of us no longer inherit farmland. We build our lives through careers instead. Our “land” is our livelihood.

That is where another Torah command offers a practical model.

Earlier in the Torah, God commands farmers:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the corners of your field… You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.” (Leviticus 19:9–10)

The mitzvot of pe’ah and leket required every farmer to leave part of the harvest behind. Generosity was built into the act of production itself.

Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners, 1857

Today, our field is no longer measured in acres but in calendars. So what if we left the corner of our workweek instead?

Imagine reserving part of every Friday to help someone establish a livelihood. Mentor a college student wondering how to begin a career. Introduce an unemployed neighbor to someone in your network. Coach an underemployed professional preparing for interviews. Spend an hour helping someone discover opportunities they cannot reach alone.

The greatest barrier facing many young adults today is not a lack of talent. It is a lack of access – to mentors, relationships, introductions, and guidance. A single conversation can redirect a career. One introduction can change the course of a life.

Matot-Masei teaches that we are responsible for helping others reach a place of security before we simply enjoy our own. Pe’ah teaches us to leave part of what we produce for others.

Together they suggest a modern mitzvah: leave the corner of your workweek to help others.

The harvest is no longer wheat for many of us. It is knowledge, experience, influence, and opportunity. So perhaps one of the holiest things we can do is use part of ours to help someone else build a future of their own.

The Deception Before the Surrender

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Parshat Pinchas is remembered for an act of zeal. It should also be remembered for an act of deception.

After the crisis at Baal Peor, God commands Moses to strike Midian. The reason is revealing:

“For they harassed you through their deception…” (Numbers 25:18)

The Torah could have focused on the immorality or the idolatry. Instead, it draws attention to the strategy that made both possible: deception.

Every nation prepares for open threats. Armies train for invasion. Citizens recognize rebellion. A visible enemy can be confronted.

Deception follows a different path.

It works quietly. It conceals its destination. It persuades people to take one reasonable step after another until they arrive somewhere they never intended to go.

That was Midian’s strategy.

The process began with attraction. Attraction became relationships. Relationships became shared experiences. Shared experiences became participation. Participation became belonging. By the time many Israelites bowed before Baal Peor, their loyalties had already been reshaped.

The decisive battle had taken place long before anyone recognized it as a battle.

That is why the Torah emphasizes deception. Sexual seduction was the instrument. The objective was the covenant itself.

Samson and Delilah by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Every generation encounters this challenge.

Ideas, values, and habits rarely replace one another overnight. They gain influence gradually. Each accommodation feels insignificant on its own. Only over time does the cumulative effect become clear.

For Jews living in free societies, the challenge often comes through competing identities. Career, politics, entertainment, consumer culture, and the endless demands of the digital world all seek our time, attention, and allegiance. None requires abandoning Jewish life. Each simply asks that it occupy a little less space than it did yesterday.

The Torah’s answer is equally deliberate.

After the crisis ends, Parshat Pinchas turns immediately to building the future: counting the next generation, dividing the land, appointing Joshua, and establishing the rhythm of communal worship. The response to deception is not withdrawal from society. It is strengthening the institutions, practices, and commitments that preserve a people’s identity.

Military threats test a nation’s strength. Deception tests its memory.

One attacks from without. The other reshapes from within.

Parshat Pinchas reminds us that a people must guard against both with equal vigilance.

Who Gets to Define the Jewish People?

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Parashat Balak contains one of the most unusual narratives in the Torah. For almost the entire portion, the Jewish people disappear from the story.

Throughout the Torah, we experience events through Moses, the Israelites, or God speaking directly to His people. This week is different. The Israelites continue their journey completely unaware of the drama unfolding around them. Instead, the Torah lifts us to the mountaintops of Moab, where King Balak and the prophet Balaam stand overlooking the Israelite camp below.

For the only time in the Torah, we see the Jewish people entirely through the eyes of outsiders.

That perspective is striking. The story told reminds us that long before anyone attempts to destroy a people, they first seek to define them.

Balak does not look upon Israel and see the descendants of Abraham returning to the land God promised their forefathers. He does not see a nation recently liberated from slavery or a people carrying a covenant that would shape the moral foundations of civilization. Looking down from the mountain, he sees only a threat. Once he reaches that conclusion, everything else follows naturally. A dangerous people deserve to be weakened. A dangerous people deserve to be cursed.

Before there is violence, there is narrative.

Balak understands that words have power. If Israel can be portrayed as an illegitimate menace, hostility becomes easier to justify. He therefore summons Balaam, believing that the right words can reshape reality itself.

But the Torah teaches exactly the opposite lesson.

Each time Balaam opens his mouth to curse Israel, God compels him to describe what he actually sees rather than what Balak wishes were true. The curses become blessings. The accusations become admiration. Instead of condemning Israel, Balaam proclaims, “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.”

The battle in Parashat Balak is ultimately not over land or military strength. It is over definition. Who has the authority to describe the Jewish people? A fearful king looking down from a distant mountain, or the God who entered into covenant with them?

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s “Balaam’s Ass”, 1626

That ancient struggle continues today.

Many of the loudest voices speaking about the Jewish people insist on defining them for themselves. Jewish history is recast as though the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel were a modern political invention rather than the foundation of Jewish civilization. Jerusalem is detached from the people who have been praying toward it for thousands of years. The descendants of ancient Israel become foreign colonizers in the very land where their national story began.

“European Jewish Zionists claimed to be descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews and to be merely “returning” to their ancient land.” – Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, July 2022

The same impulse appears in discussions of antisemitism. Increasingly, others claim the authority to determine what Jews should consider antisemitic while dismissing the experience of Jewish communities themselves. The people who are the object of hatred are told they cannot define the hatred directed against them.

The pattern is remarkably familiar.

Balak first decided the Israelites were a threat and concluded they deserved condemnation. The false identity justified the action.

The Torah overturns that process.

The only outsider whose words are remembered for eternity is the one whom God compels to abandon prejudice and speak truth. Balaam climbed the mountain intending to curse Israel, but he remained a prophet. He still recognized that there was a Judge above him. When God commanded him to bless, his own desires gave way to a higher truth.

Today’s loudest critics acknowledge no such authority beyond themselves. They do not seek God’s judgment but the approval of crowds, political movements, or academic fashions. Their words may echo through universities, international institutions, social media, and the halls of government, but they carry no weight in Heaven. They resonate only among fellow travelers who have already chosen contempt over truth.

Three thousand years ago, God refused to allow those who hated Israel to define Israel. That remains the enduring lesson of Parashat Balak. The Jewish people are not who their enemies say they are. They are who God says they are.

Evidence as Narrative: Canaan Grapes and Joseph’s Coat

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“Now the days were the days of the first ripe grapes” (Numbers 13:20).

At first glance, the verse appears to be little more than a calendar note. The spies entered Canaan during harvest season. Naturally they found grapes.

But the Torah rarely includes details without purpose.

The Israelites had spent generations hearing about a land flowing with milk and honey. They stood at the threshold of that promise. The spies were being sent to verify it. They entered the land at the very moment when its abundance would be on full display. The nation was waiting for proof.

And the spies returned carrying exactly that proof: an enormous cluster of grapes from the Valley of Eshkol.

Panel showing two Israelite spies carrying enormous grapes from map by Jan Jansson, 1631

Yet the sages make a curious observation. According to Sotah 34a, the ten spies who delivered the negative report carried the produce. Joshua and Caleb carried nothing.

Why not?

The question becomes even more intriguing when we remember that this is not the first time representatives of the tribes returned carrying evidence.

Centuries earlier, Joseph’s brothers returned to Jacob with Joseph’s coat dipped in blood. They never explicitly claimed Joseph was dead. They simply presented the evidence and allowed Jacob to reach the conclusion they intended.

Perhaps the spies were doing something similar.

We often read the giant cluster of grapes as proof of the goodness of the land. But what if that was not how the spies intended it to be understood?

The Torah’s report moves almost seamlessly from the fruit to the inhabitants:

“Indeed it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong…” (Numbers 13:27-28)

Look at these grapes, the spies may have been saying. Ordinary men do not live in a place that produces fruit like this. The same land that yields giant grapes yields giant warriors.

Seen this way, the grapes were not simply a sample of the harvest. They were evidence enlisted in support of a conclusion they sought to impart: fear.

This possibility sheds new light on the teaching in Sotah. If the fruit was being used to support the spies’ narrative, Joshua and Caleb’s refusal to carry it becomes understandable. They were not rejecting the grapes. They were rejecting the interpretation attached to them.

The parallel to Joseph’s coat becomes even deeper when we consider who these men were.

Joshua descended from Joseph through Ephraim. Caleb descended from Judah. The descendants of Joseph and Judah became the two spies who stood apart from the majority.

Joseph’s brothers brought a coat. The spies brought grapes. Neither group needed to invent evidence. The objects were real. What mattered was the narrative attached to them.

The brothers used a coat to tell a story about Joseph. The spies used grapes to tell a story about the Land. In both cases, the evidence itself did not contain the conclusion. The conclusion came from those presenting it.

Perhaps that is the deeper lesson connecting these two stories. Facts matter, but facts rarely arrive without interpretation. The same coat could become evidence of tragedy or merely separation. The same cluster of grapes could become evidence of giants or evidence of God’s promise.

The challenge is not simply to examine the evidence before us. It is to recognize the narrative that accompanies it and to ask whether the story being told is the only one the evidence supports.