"Every new #sefer in the #Torah opens a doorway.

#Bereishis opens the doorway of beginnings. #Shemos opens the doorway of becoming. #Vayikra opens the doorway of the inner world and the discipline of holiness held close. Each #book shifts the frame of the story, and the direction in which the neshama is asked to turn.

Sefer #Bamidbar opens a doorway of a different kind. It leads into the wilderness that will shape the next stage of the nation’s life. The midbar stretches in every direction, a landscape with no roads and no familiar landmarks. It is the Torah’s first map. It is not a map drawn on parchment. It is a map drawn in people – a map of where they stand, how they orient themselves, and what they face."

https://jewishpress.com/bamidbar-and-the-first-map/

Bamidbar and the First Map

The midbar is often imagined as a place of danger and emptiness. The Torah presents it differently. The wilderness is not chaos. It is unwritten space.

The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

"#Ziegler’s Ruth: From Alienation to Monarchy is a 534-page book on a four-chapter #megillah. The disproportion is the point. Ziegler, a faculty member at #HerzogCollege and teacher at #MatanandMidreshetMoriah, spent more than two decades teaching #MegillatRuth in #bateimidrash before committing these #shiurim to print. What she has produced is not a work of academic #biblical criticism.

It is a work of #Torah, one that happens to deploy #literary tools in service of the sacred text’s deeper meaning. The methodology she calls “#literary-#theological,” a term she credits to #Rabbi #ShalomCarmy, fulfills something Rabbi #AharonLichtenstein called for in a 1962 lecture at #SternCollege: the application of close reading and literary analysis to #Tanach, not to evaluate the text but to hear it more clearly. “I have eschewed a pretense of academic detachment,” she writes...”

https://www.jpost.com/judaism/article-895368

'From Alienation to Monarchy': Ruth and the architecture of loving-kindness - book review

Yael Ziegler’s 'Ruth: From Alienation to Monarchy' is a 534-page book on a four-chapter megillah.

The Jerusalem Post

Caption Contest Cartoon by Benjamin Schwartz

My Entries in the Moment Cartoon Caption Contest for Spring 2026 attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2026/04/my-ent… #BenjaminSchwartz #Torah #MomentMag #Cartoon #CaptionContest