Earlier this year I asked readers what one thing they wanted to learn about the Old Testament. Many mentioned the 12 tribes of Israel.
Learning about the 12 tribes helps us understand the Old and New Testament and the figures who shaped both faiths.
Who Were the Founders? Continue reading
I grew up with stories of my grandfather’s service during World War II. The stories conveyed inspiration, humor and love all at once.
The dedication he felt to our country remains with me, and it explains the extraordinary tears I shed invoking a blessing at a deployment ceremony here in Chicago.
I had never been asked to give a blessing for departing troops, and I did not know a deployment ceremony even existed. It was a struggle.
What can I say to men and women who will not see their spouses, parents, children, boyfriends and girlfriends for 14 months? How can I bring comfort to their loved ones?
Does Prayer Work
These questions go to the heart of prayer. Do we pray for ourselves or others? Does God answer our prayers? Does prayer work even if we don’t hear God’s answer?
I believe prayer works, but not in the way we often think. An elevator works when it takes us up and down. Prayer works when it invests our lives with meaning and purpose, with comfort and understanding.
Prayer works when it brings out our most noble, empathetic and loving virtues.Prayer works when it changes us.
The Prayer
Here are the words I shared: 
In Judaism the highest value is pikuach nefesh, the saving of a life. We are commanded to set aside all other tasks in order to save a life in need. That is what you are doing today. That is what you will do over the next 14 months. So let us pray:
Eternal God, we give you profound thanks for all those who serve our nation. Give them strength. Give them love. Bless them with your presence. Sharpen their skills. Make their judgments true.
Help them serve with wisdom, honor and integrity. May their faith be fostered and may they answer fear with courage. May your angels hold them and guide them, May your presence give them strength, hope and faith.
And bless their families, Oh God. Their mothers and fathers, spouses and children, loved ones: all who love them and will miss them. Bring them comfort and strength.
Let them know the blessing of their loved one’s service, the gifts they bring to the world, the courage with which they inspire us all. Let them be their strength, Oh God. Let them know you are near to them and to their loved ones, giving them your love and your grace.
And be present with our country’s leaders and officers, Oh God. Give them wise judgment, commitment and courage. Let them know of your love for them and guide them in protecting the freedom, liberty and justice we cherish.
We turn to You, Oh God, and in the words an ancient Jewish prayer we say, “May God grant strength unto our people, and may God bless all people with peace.” Amen
The conversation between God and Moses at the Burning Bush is the beginning of a revolution of the spirit. God leads a people from slavery to freedom, proving that no nation can enslave another and survive.
Yet, this revolution of the spirit starts humbly. After God has begun instructing Moses, Moses pauses and asks a seemingly simple question. He asks, “Who am I?” It is seemingly simple because Moses knows who he is. He is a shepherd being asked by God to undertake a tremendous mission. Continue reading
When entering into a person’s home, we typically take off our shoes. Especially here in wintery Chicago, taking them off comes naturally and instantly.
Is this act simply a matter of manners? Or does it symbolize a deeper feeling? The Bible answers in a famous story.
Moses is out shepherding his father-in-law’s flock. Suddenly he sees a bush that burns without being consumed by the fire. He turns in for a closer look, and then hears a voice emanating from it.
What Moses Needed to Learn
The voice says, “Moses, Moses…Do not come nearer to here. Take off your shoes from your feet for the place where you stand is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5)
At first glance, these words seem anticlimactic. Moses hears God’s words for the first time, and what does God tell him? To take off his shoes.
Yet, the meaning behind the words is profound. They convey critical lessons for Moses to learn before he begins leading the Israelites.
1. We are spiritual as well as physical beings: In this example shoes represent Moses physical being. They cover a part of his body. They tread on the physical word. They gather physical elements.
By asking Moses to take them off, God is directing the conversation. God is asking Moses to enter into a different realm. God is speaking to Moses’s spirit, his heart and his mind, his soul and his body.
Why would God need to do so? Because Moses is about to make a monumental decision. He will change his life and invest it into leading the Jewish people. He has to be fully committed.
God needs the assent of soul and body.
2. Humility is a part of faith: God is about to speak directly with Moses. God has not spoken directly with anyone in the Bible since the patriarch Jacob.
By asking Moses to take off his shoes, God is preparing Moses for this encounter and instructing him in the art of humility. By highlighting the centrality of humility, God is establishing a pattern for future generations.
Humility and faith are inseparable.
Thomas Merton explained this truth beautifully, “In perfect humility all selfishness disappears and your soul no longer lives for itself or in itself for God: and it is lost and submerged in Him and transformed into Him.”
To that we can only say Amen.
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What he didn’t say that the first step is the hardest step.
Jewish wisdom teaches this in the story of a man named Nachshon. His story begins on the shores of the Red Sea. The Israelites are on their way out of Egypt. Pharaoh and his army, however, are in hot pursuit. Continue reading
Even though Moses is the hero of the Old Testament, we know little about his early life. We glimpse him floating down the Nile River. Then he is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.
And then he is an adolescent leaving Pharaoh’s palace. We know nothing about what he was taught or how he lived during his childhood.
It is only after he leaves the Palace that we begin to see his character. We begin to see what led God to choose him to lead the Israelites to freedom. One quality, in particular, stands out. Moses is passionate about justice. He is passionate about justice in all its forms:
1. Defending the oppressed: Moses’s first act as an adult is defending an Israelite slave. He leaves the palace and sees an Egyptian task master beating a helpless slave. Moses intervenes and stops the beating.
For Moses justice does not differentiate between slave and master. Even if the master has a legal right to beat the slave, he does not have a moral one.
2. Doing what’s right, even if it means criticizing your own people: The next time we see Moses is when he encounters two Hebrew slaves fighting with one another. He does not turn away and ignore it because they are his people.
He intervenes and chastises the one who instigated the right, showing he is not afraid of criticism and making enemies. He will do what is right in every circumstance.
3. Remaining faithful wherever you are: After Moses is forced to flee Egypt, he arrives in the land of Midian. His first stop is a well. There he encounters a gang of shepherds harassing a group of seven sisters seeking to water their flock. Moses intervenes, defending the sisters. He is a stranger in a strange land, yet he does not shy away from seeking justice.
According to the great Jewish scholar Ahad Ha-am, Moses’s three acts of justice are what lead God to choose him to lead the people from slavery to freedom. God could have chosen someone else. But God knew this impassioned fighter for justice would not give up until His people were free.
Beginnings are times of blessing. They are also times for reflection. As we enter the new year, let us look for ways to bless one another and be a blessing for the world. And let us reflect on what makes our lives a unique blessing and gift to the world.
Every year, to help me in this task, I read a favorite prayer composed by Rabbi Alvin Fine. It pictures life as a journey with many beginnings and endings.
Underlying those moments is the Eternal Spirit, the God of the Universe, whose Presence is our greatest blessing. I share this prayer with the hope it brings blessings and comfort.
Birth is a beginning and death a destination;
But life is a journey.
A going, a growing from stage to stage:
From childhood to maturity and youth to old age.From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion and then perhaps, to wisdom.
From weakness to strength or strength to weakness and often back again.
From health to sickness and back we pray, to health again.From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion.
From grief to understanding, from fear to faith;
From defeat to defeat to defeat, until, looking backward or ahead:We see that victory lies not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage, a sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning and death a destination;
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage,
Made stage by stage…To life everlasting.
Are there laws we are morally bound to disobey? The Bible says yes. It gives us history’s first recorded example. Its heroes are the midwives Shifra and Puah, and their story unfolds in the Book of Exodus.
In Exodus 1:16 Pharaoh says to them, “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” This was a slow and deliberate genocide of the Jewish people.
The midwives, however, did not comply. When Pharaoh confronted them, they told him the Hebrew women gave birth too quickly, and they could not arrive in time to take the boys.
Why Did They Disobey?
What motivated the midwives to act in this way? Were they Hebrew women unafraid of Pharaoh? Or perhaps they were Egyptian women who could not bear to take a child’s life?
The Bible is ambiguous on their identities. They could have been Egyptians or Hebrew. I believe the ambiguity is deliberate.
Their actions emerged out of a morality and sense of justice that transcends nationality, religion or culture. Their faith rested in a higher power. In defying the Pharaoh, they become, as Jonathan Sacks puts it, “heroines of the spirit, grants in in the story of humankind.”
Their legacy is our blessing.
What is the sound of God’s voice? Is it similar to that of James Earl Jones? Is it deep and soothing? It is powerful and urgent?
Filmmakers would like us to think it’s any or all of the above. The truth is that we do not know. The Bible, however, gives us a clue.
The Voice Moses Heard
It occurs when Moses encounters the burning bush. Moses stopped and listened to the voice coming from it. It sounded, according to traditional Jewish interpretation, like the voice of his father.
In other words, to put Moses at ease and open up his heart and soul, God spoke in the voice of his father.
Why did Moses need to hear the sound of his father’s voice?
1. To calm his fear: Moses was a lowly shepherd. He worked out in the Midian wilderness. He had fled Egypt to save his life. Now God wants him to return. God wants him to confront the Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world.
Moses needs strength. Moses needs reassurance. For Moses the voice of his father conveys that strength. It reminds him of who he is and what he owes his people.
2. To overcome his uncertainty: When God asks Moses to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites to freedom, Moses tells God he is not up for the job. The Israelites do not know him. He is a man “slow of speech.”
The voice of his father gives Moses confidence. It lets him know he is not alone, and that he was born for the task God has set before him.
3. To give him hope: Moses was not supposed to live. All the male babies born to Israelites women were supposed to be thrown in the Nile River.
Yet Moses survives. He survives because of the ingenuity and faith of his mother, father and sister.
By reminding him of his origins, the voice of his father symbolizes faith and hope. Moses has been through difficult times before. He can make it through again. With God all things are possible.