This week’s haftarah, from the book of Ezekiel, discusses the changing power structures and leadership in the changing times of Israel.
Connected Parashat Shemini’s Haftarah, in Ezekiel, Bex Stern Rosenblatt explores the intersection of shame, guilt, and embarrassment.
This week’s haftarah explores human sacrifice. While the Tanakh seems to be mixed about it, God may command human sacrifice in this haftarah.
God created the world but it was not complete until a home was made for God. These homes come in the forms of the Mishkan and the Temple.
Jeoash, the king discussed in this week’s haftarah, becomes king at a young age. Does his goodness come from himself or his teachers?
This week’s Haftarah parallels the parashah’s discussion on God. The Israelites face more attractive gods but return to God, in the end.
Ezekiel is rather similar to Moses. Both of them serve God and Israel outside of the land of Israel. This week’s Haftarah explores that.
Building Solomon’s Temple was perhaps the greatest feat ever of Jewish architecture. This week’s haftarah explores this more.
The greatest story of our tradition is a story about freedom. This week’s Haftarah from Jeremiah explores freedom and our choices.
Can God change? Is the essence of eternity and divinity to never change or to be constantly evolving? Is change a human quality?
This week’s Haftarah, Isaiah, focuses on the promised destruction and regeneration. Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” depicts that.
Rethinking the Tanakh as a Musical and the Song of Deborah as one of the major musical numbers invites to reflect differently.
A claim to the land of Israel ranged from a covenant with Abraham to laws to keep the land. This week’s haftarah discusses that.
What composes the inner grit, the resilient core of a person? Whatever it is, Pharoah is notoriously lacking.
This week’s haftarah brings meaning to words without meaning—nonsense—and how to pray without understanding the literal meaning.
This week’s haftarah juxtaposes King David preparing for his own death with both Jacob and Joseph’s preparations for their own deaths.
Parashat Vayigash continues a long narrative of sibling relationships. The reconciliation focused on here, reflects in this week’s haftarah.
In making sense of details we begin to construct the grander concept and we realize we are in the presence of something bigger.
Many of our sacred texts are deeply unsettling. Our ancestors are deeply flawed people and their stories do not present easy takeaways.
In the haftarah for Vayishlach, from the Book of Obadiah, we read the story of God rebuking the nation of Edom, rather than Israel.
As we read the stories of Jacob, it is worthwhile to pay attention to the interplay between hope and God as the redeemer us from various Sheols.
In the haftarah for Parashat Toldot, the Book of Malachi describes a dialogue of pushback between God and the people of Israel.
With memories ever-changing, how do we trust what we remember and what is shared with us? How do we trust the memories of Torah characters?
In Vayera’s haftarah, we read the story of Elisha and a big deal woman in Shunem reflecting three different models of hospitality.
In Lech Lecha’s haftarah, we are given a vision of what our lives might have been, if only they’d been a little different.
In the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple, God explains that God has not in fact abandoned Zion.
If creation was ongoing but no one observed it, did it actually still happen? Did creation cease when God disappeared?