Sacks - Covenant Conversation - 1 - Genesis

"We must live with the times,” the Rebbe said.

 

The disciples, sitting around the table, eagerly awaiting the master’s words, were perplexed. “Live with the times? Isn’t that what the enemies of faith are always saying - The past is dead; long live the future? Surely we believe the opposite, that God’s word is eternal, that certain things do not change, that values and principles and laws are constant. To be a Jew is to be beyond time. What then does the Rebbe mean when he says, We must live with the times?”

 

“What I mean,” said the Rebbe, “is that we must live with the parashat hashavua, the weekly portion of the Torah.”

 

Like so many Jewish stories, ancient and modern, this one, told of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, contains hidden depths. Wherever they are throughout the world, Jews read a weekly portion of the Mosaic books - the parashat hashavua. It forms the music of the Jewish year. Autumn is Genesis (Bereshit) with its tales of beginnings, the birth of the world, of humanity and of the Jewish people. Winter is Exodus (Shemot), the story of exile and redemption, slavery and freedom and the beginning of the long journey through the wilderness in search of the Promised Land. Spring is Leviticus (Vayikra), with its laws of sacrifice, sometimes remote to the modern ear, yet shot through with ethical grandeur and at its fulcrum the two greatest moral imperatives of all - to love our neighbour as ourselves, and the far harder yet ultimately more important command to love the stranger, the other, the one not like ourselves. Numbers (Bemidbar) ushers in Shavuot, the festival of revelation, and does so with the story of the Israelites in the wilderness, a fraught tale of backslidings and rebellions, perhaps the most realistic narrative ever told of the birth of a nation. Summer is Deuteronomy (Devarim), that magnificent book of Moses’s addresses in the last month of his life, his vision - never surpassed - of Jewish history and destiny as the people of the covenant, charged with living in faithfulness to God.

 

Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union,  Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd., Jerusalem, New Milford, London, 2009. - 260 pp.

ISBN 978-1-59264-020-1, hardcover

 

Living With the Times: The Parasha 

Genesis: An Introduction 

Bereshit ‏בראשית

The Book of Teaching 

The Essence of Man 

Three Stages of Creation 

Violence in the Name of God 

Garments of Light 

Noah נח

Beyond Obedience 

Babel: A Story of Heaven and Earth 

The Objectivity of Morality 

Drama in Four Acts 

Lekh Lekha לך-לך

The Long Walk to Freedom 

A New Kind of Hero 

Four Dimensions of the Journey 

Fathers and Sons 

Promise and Fulfillment 

Vavera וירא 

God and Strangers 

Challenging God 

The Ambivalent Jew 

The Miracle of a Child 

Hayei Sara חיי־שרה  

Land and Children 

Prayer and Conversation

Parental Authority and the Choice of a Marriage Partner

On Judaism and Islam 

Toledot תולדות 

On Clones and Identity 

The Future of the Past 

The Courage of Persistence

The Other Face of Esau 

Vayetzeh ויצא 

Encountering God 

The Ladder of Prayer 

When the “I” is Silent 

On Love and Justice 

Hearing the Torah 

Vayishlah וישלח 

Physical Fear, Moral Distress 

Wrestling Face to Face 

Surviving Crisis 

Jacob’s Destiny, Israel’s Name 

Vayeshev וישב 

The Tragedy of Reuben 

Refusing Comfort, Keeping Hope 

Flames and Words 

A Tale of Two Women 

Miketz מקץ

Man Proposes, God Disposes 

Between Freedom and Providence 

The Universal and the Particular 

Behind the Mask 

Vayigash ויגש 

In Search of Repentance 

Penitential Man 

Does My Father Love Me? 

Forgiveness 

Vayehi ויחי

The White Lie

Forgetfulness and Fruitfulness 

The Future of the Past 

Jewish Time 

About the Author