Word: torah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rabbi's left, her back straight, knees primly together, a look of concentration on her face. There is a full house this Sabbath evening at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, N.Y., and Weiss's proud family is in the third pew. In minutes she will be called to the Torah to chant from the sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers, her rite of passage into full Jewish adulthood. One is tempted to say, "Today Elaine Weiss is a woman," except that she has been one a while: she is 62. Nearby sit five other Temple Israel Bat Mitzvah girls...
That realization, she says, led her to the lectern tonight. Weiss gazes down at the Torah scroll and chants, "Kol y-may neez-ro" ("Throughout his term as Nazarite"). That portion of the Scripture is about a group of ancient Jews (Nazarites) who, though not born into a priestly class, find their way to holiness through personal effort. A little later on, in a speech, Weiss explains, "I feel somewhat like a Nazarite tonight...
...training activities that violate the Sabbath. He says, “I end up having to make a lot of choices. I hope they’re the right choices. Well, they are the right choices for me and my family,” and he notes that the Torah makes provisions for such violations in the name of national defense...
Then there is the matter of Isaac and Ishmael. Unlike the Torah, the Koran does not specify which son God tells Abraham to sacrifice. Muslim interpreters a generation after Muhammad concluded that the prophet was descended from the slave woman Hagar's boy, Ishmael. Later scholarly opinion determined that Ishmael was also the son who went under the knife. The decision effectively completed the Jewish disenfranchisement. Not only was their genealogical claim void, but their forefather lost his role in the great drama of surrender...
...Abraham's Arab son, but the custom evaporated as they began living under Muslim rule. By the 11th century the great biblical scholar Rashi, citing earlier authorities, described Ishmael as a "thief" whom "everybody hates," an insult that can still be found in his prominently placed commentary in many Torah editions today and that is taught inmany Orthodox religious schools. IbnKathir, a 13th century Koranic commentator, struck back by claiming the Jews had "dishonestly and slanderously" introduced Isaac into the Torah story: "They forced this understanding because Isaac is their father, while Ishmael is the father ofthe Arabs." That sentiment...