Weekly Torah Commentaries

The story of Jonah is left without a conclusion, but with an open question: God says, “Shouldn’t I be concerned about the 120,000 human souls in Nineveh?” The question invites Jonah to share in God’s concern and compassion, and it expands into a question for us.

The Akedah, the narrative of the binding of Isaac found in Genesis 22, forms one of the major themes of the traditional Rosh Hashanah liturgy. The well-known, if unsettling, account follows Abraham as he attempts to obey a divine call to sacrifice his son on the altar.

Our hope is not based on Israel’s ability to hold onto God, but on God’s faithfulness to hold onto Israel. And because he remains faithful, he continues to call us to teshuvah. He calls us to choose life, love Adonai, listen to his voice, and cling to him.

There’s an ancient story that the Romans required bridge builders to stand underneath their completed bridges when the supporting scaffolding was removed. The reason is obvious—it was an incentive for them to show that they had done the job correctly, that they had “skin in the game.” Otherwise there would be some consequences for them. It is clear that God has a lot of skin in the game in the story of our people.

This week’s portion opens with a legal code regarding the treatment of prisoners of war that can seem remote from life today, until we set it against the catalogue of wartime horrors compiled over the past century. Read against that record, the distance collapses.