D'var Torah

As our dark nights become longer, we have the opportunity to increase the light in the coming days as we acknowledge the miracle of Hanukkah. We celebrate light, miracles, and the strength and resilience of the Jewish people. The Maccabees finding and...Read more...

This week’s Torah reading, Vayishlach, focuses on the second half of the life of Jacob. In the past few weeks, we have read about his early life, his feud with his brother Esau and his flight to his uncle, Laban, whose daughters, Leah and...Read more...

This week, Jews around the world will read the Torah portion Toldot, which means “generations.” Among other things, this portion uncovers many challenging family dynamics. We read the stories of Rebecca and Isaac, and Jacob and Esau. There is lying and...Read more...

Dear Friends,

This week’s Torah portion reads like a soap opera. Vayera (Genesis 18:1-22:24) contains the story of Sodom and Gemorah, Sarah having Isaac late in life, and the Akeidah -- the...Read more...

Shanah Tovah! I hope you had a fulfilling and meaningful High Holy Days. Now that we have begun the Torah reading cycle again from the beginning, after Simchat Torah, it is remarkable how quickly we are taken through the most memorable stories...Read more...

Dear TRS Family, Shanah Tovah! It was so wonderful to see so many of you over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as we brought in the new year of 5785 together. We were so moved by the time we...Read more...

In this week’s Torah Portion, we find Moses on the last day of his life, addressing the Israelites for one final time. Though we have had many chapters of Moses speaking to the Israelites, this one is the only one that is sung. Using his final breaths, Moses choses to teach with song. There are only two other times in the...Read more...

One could say that this week’s portion, Ki Tavo, is a study in biblical behavior management. As Moses nears the end of his Herculean effort to prepare the Israelites to be faithful to their covenant with God, he seems to try every way he knows to encourage, entice, guilt and...Read more...

Dear Friends,

The events of this week in Gaza and Israel have been so difficult, with the tragic deaths of the six Israeli hostages, including 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who lived for a few years in Richmond, before moving to Israel. He, along with 5...Read more...

This week’s parasha is a continuation of last week’s speech by Moses to the Israelites as they are about to leave him and enter the Promised Land.  This week he tells them that, if they maintain their covenant with God by observing all the commandments, God will...Read more...

This week’s Torah portion, d’varim, launches us into the book of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah. Deuteronomy (which means “second telling” — “d’varim,” the Hebrew name, means “words”) is largely a retelling of the Israelites’ wilderness journey,...Read more...

In Parashat Pinchas, we learn an important lesson through the story of a man named Zelophehad, the patriarch of a family with five daughters. When Zelophehad dies, his property is distributed to male relatives, skipping over his five daughters. Had these daughters been sons, they...Read more...

How do we carry forward the legacies of people we’ve loved, and lost, after they die? How do we find our own way forward, for ourselves?

These are two of the central questions of this week’s Torah portion, Chukat. In Chukat, we meet the Ancient Israelites in a time...Read more...

In the face of the unknown, how are we to navigate our own fears?

This is one of the central questions of our Torah portion this week, Shelach L’cha. As Shelach L’cha opens, that Israelites are standing on the edge of the Promised Land, and God commands...Read more...

In this week’s Torah portion, Naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89) we learn about the Nazirite – a person who volunteered to observe certain personal restrictions either in repentance for a past behavior, as an act of prayer for something in the future, or in gratitude for some...Read more...