David Curzon
By David Curzon
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News The Characteristics of a Mensch
This week’s portion contains the revelation on Sinai and the Ten Commandments, but it starts with Jethro, the Midianite priest who was the father-in-law of Moses, and as a consequence is named after Jethro. Why has the rabbinic tradition organized the reading in this way? To my mind, we are being told to pay close…
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News The Moments That Still Live
When Joseph introduces Pharaoh to his father, Jacob, Pharaoh asks him, in the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation of Genesis 47:8, which is here, as is often the case, much closer to the Hebrew than more recent translations: How many are the days of the years of your life? The more recent JPS translation reduces…
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News Mirth and Mourning
The Book of Ecclesiastes (in Hebrew, “Kohelet,” the Assembler or Preacher) is a compilation of proverbs traditionally attributed to and worthy of Solomon. Its opening in the King James translation is instantly memorable: Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity As the Oxford Jewish Study Bible puts it, “the one…
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Culture Is God Just?
The portion read on the intermediate Shabbat of Pesach, Exodus 33:12-34:26, contains some of the most extraordinary passages in the Torah. Moses asks God to “show me now Thy ways, that I may know Thee” (Exodus 33:13) and gets the comforting response, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” But…
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Culture Techniques Of Understanding
What are we to make of the sacrifices central to the Israelite cult described in Leviticus in such detail? The offering of “an ephah of fine flour for a meal-offering” to God can be dismissed in our mind as un-troubling, but the slaughter of animals as part of a religious ritual is much more disturbing:…
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Culture The Poetry of Mature Experience
The Sights Along the Harbor: New and Collected Poems By Harvey Shapiro Wesleyan University Press, 288 pages, $29.95. * * *| In his mother’s recollection, Harvey Shapiro’s first words were in Yiddish. Born in 1924 to an observant Jewish family, he lived as a child first on the Lower East Side, then high enough up…
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Culture Offerings of the Willing Heart
The second half of Exodus is largely concerned with the construction of the tabernacle. For me, the most evocative aspect of all the detailed descriptions is this: And Moses spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying: “This is the thing which the Lord commanded, saying: Take from among you an offering…
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Culture The Choice of Staying In Or Getting Out
Exodus 21:2-6 (and, with small variants, Deuteronomy 15:12-18) prescribes that a Hebrew slave, after six years’ servitude, must be offered the opportunity to regain freedom, and the consequences if he chooses to stay in servitude: If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he be married then his wife shall…
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