The Parasha with Rabbi Dweck

When one door closes, we often stare at it so long that we miss the ones that have opened, and when many doors are open, we hesitate to walk through any of them for fear of needing to close some. Vayera and its Haftara show us, through Abraham, Sarah, Lot, the widow and the woman of Shunem, that a real life means closing some doors so that we can walk through the one G-d is holding open for us.#Torah #Haftara #Parasha #Vayera #Judaism #RabbiDweck

There are only two options when it comes to God: either He is God, or you are, and the entire haftara of Lekh Lekha is built on that one foundational truth. He reveals Himself here not just as the first cause but as the necessary being upon which all things rely, the very discovery that Abraham pursued relentlessly from the age of three until he finally came to know his Creator. And His promise to us, as the children of Abraham, is that when we stop holding ourselves up by our own bootstraps and open ourselves to that truth, we will always find a new source of strength, because He holds the ends of the earth and will walk us through every limit we think we have reached.

The Haftara for Parashat Noah (Isaiah 54-55) explores God's promise to Israel through the image of the waters of Noah, and the covenant that endures even when the mountains crumble.The haftara's language of abandonment, widowhood, return, and covenant becomes a meditation on suffering, meaning, Jewish perseverance, and the possibility of emerging from hardship with deeper compassion, wisdom, and life.

The haftara for Bereshit from Isaiah 42 opens by affirming God as Creator and then describes Israel as a covenant people meant to be a light to the nations, yet “blind” and “deaf,” alongside God’s promise to lead them from darkness to light, remember them, and redeem them. Rabbi Dweck has held rabbinic leadership roles in the US and the UK. He is the Rosh Bet Midrash of TheHabura.com and the Rabbi Levy Chair of Jewish Wisdom at the London School of Jewish Studies.For more, check out rabbijosephdweck.com.

Before Moshe Rabbenu dies, he leaves us a poem, not a set of instructions. He calls the very heavens and earth to witness it, bringing us back to the same shamayim and arets that stood at creation. That choice matters: poetry, unlike prose, holds a myriad of meanings at once, and that openness is exactly what a person needs walking into Yom Kippur. We read Ha'azinu this year not before Sukkot, as is usual, but right before Yom Kippur, and the poem's layered possibility turns out to be the very structure of teshuvah.Rabbi Dweck has held rabbinic leadership roles in the US and the UK. He is the Rosh Bet Midrash of TheHabura.com and the Rabbi Levy Chair of Jewish Wisdom at the London School of Jewish Studies.