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Rosh Hodesh Kislev | ראש חודש כיסלו
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Welcoming Kislev
As we welcome a new month, we invite you to read, listen, and share the words of Torah in this newsletter—bringing your lives to Torah and Torah to your lives. We begin with words and artwork by Nireh Or Instagram Project founders Rabbi Hayley Goldstein`19 and Lizzie Sivitz.
This new month of Kislev derives its name from the Akkadian word kislimu, meaning “to thicken” because of the plentiful rains, and perhaps due to thickening darkness during this time. Since nine out of the ten dreams mentioned in the Torah are read in the weeks of Kislev, it’s also known as the month of dreams. In the Talmud we learn that a dream is one sixtieth of prophecy, a glimpse into something beyond. This month, in the thickening darkness, pay attention to your dreams. What do you notice?
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Generations and Their Wells
Parashat Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9)
By Rabbi Arthur Green, Hebrew College Rector
The narratives of Genesis, especially in readings for Va-Yera and Toledot, are an interweaving of two sets of tales. The better-known ones are the stories of our patriarchal family: the birth of sons and the conflicts between them, first Isaac and Ishmael, then Jacob and Esau.
Alternating with these chapters are accounts of our ancestors’ attempts to live among their neighbors, including repeated conflicts over wives, land, flocks, and wells. Given the terrain of the Land of Canaan, it is no surprise that water rights were an important issue. “Who dug this well?” was a question raised more than once, and the names attached to those diggings recall hostility and conflict. Finally, we are told in both chapters 21 and 26, they came to peace at Beersheva, maybe named as a place where an oath was sworn, or maybe a well that overflowed with a sevenfold amount of water—or perhaps both.
These chapters, in which both the ancestry and mission of Israel are first defined, were inherited by a people for whom life as wandering shepherds had become a distant memory. Later Jews did not fight over ownership of pasture lands or the digging of wells. Still, they passed these tales on from one generation to the next, certain that they contained great wisdom and guidance for their own very different lives. Countless generations of scholars and tradesmen, city-dwellers and town folk all over the western world, and now highly educated professional and business people scattered across the globe, gather in synagogues to read about the Abraham’s wanderings across the Negev or Isaac’s conflict over the wells in Gerar.
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Why We Say "70 Faces of Torah"
The ancient rabbinic expression “70 Faces (or Facets) of Torah” is a simultaneous call for epistemological humility and interpretive creativity. It is a reminder that only the Divine possesses ultimate truth and that as finite seekers, we need the contributions of many distinct voices. Torah can be compared to a precious gem that refracts differently based on one’s perspective. We, must, therefore, “turn it and turn it” in the company of passionate and compassionate teachers, students, and peers, who each bring their own unique gifts—“faces”—to the ongoing search for light and life.
By Rabbi Or Rose (above), Director of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership at Hebrew College & Founding Editor of the Hebrew College Seventy Faces of Torah blog
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Vertical Ladders of Sky, Horizontal Ladders of Earth
"I just love the spiritual sensibility that’s reflected here, one that is, itself, grounded on Earth, but reaches beyond. And one that doesn’t overreach, doesn’t claim to know more than we can know, one that’s in love with the aching complexity of the human experience, but also insists that there’s something beyond, that there is a transcendence that touches our existence and tugs at us in ways that are both mysterious and palpable." — Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld
In this episode of Speaking Torah, Hebrew College President Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld reads Rabbi Jordan Schuster's d'var, in which he explores the connection between John Keats and the story of Jacob’s Ladder, and teaches that regardless of how fissured this world feels, ladders, like bridges, hold the possibility for connection and relationship.
Can a single person actually confront and repair really difficult relationships without having a support system? Yes. However, help makes for lighter work. And in this essay, Jordan reflects on Keats’ desire to escape the world up the ladder, versus Jacob’s desire to use the ladder to foster unity in the human world, and Jordan’s own desire for our communities and institutions to play a role in this work.
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Torah For This Moment
Visit our On Torah page web page to read, listen, and watch the words of Torah emerging from our students, faculty, and alumni. May they draw you more deeply into sensitive listening, probing questioning, and humble speaking of Torah and Jewish living.
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Hebrew College is an innovative national institute for Jewish learning and leadership based in Newton, Massachusetts. We are dedicated to Jewish literacy, creativity, and community, and a world of dignity and compassion for all. Our students are future rabbis, cantors, and educators, and people at every stage of life who love to learn. Together, we are infusing Jewish life with substance, spirit, beauty, imagination, and a sense of purpose. Please join us and support our work with a tax-deductible gift.
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