Shabbos reading

The weather was very bad, some members of the family sick and me very tired after a very exhausting week and thus, we decided to spend more time indoors, with books and some boarding games.

The menu of lectures for this Shabbos included:

- Besides the usual Chumash for the parasha and haftarah, I included the lecture of the Rashi's commentaries on Bereishis. The children are starting with Rashi in school but it does not mean that it is so ridiculously simple to be read in only a couple of minutes. I started slowly with Noah and it took me some good hours to get to the end.

I continued with an interesting lecture of a book written by Joseph Carlebach, the father of Rav Shlomo Carlebach z''l and the last chief rabbi of Hamburg, killed in Riga, in 1942. The book is an interesting historical and theological introduction into the life of three big prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. A lecture that I continued with the latest chapters from Joshua and Judges, also from Artscroll. As usual, this is only the introductory lecture, as I need to start to study it seriously, eventually with chevruta.

The rest of the reading time I was spent reading another book by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, One People?, addressing many of the topics that I am thinking about very often: What are we supposed to do faced with the challenges of the diversity of Jewish movements? How far are we from each other and how even far our paths will go in the next decades? The final words are quite encouraging, but in practice, we need to do a lot each and every day: "The primal scene of Jewish history is of the Israelites in the wilderness, fractious, rebellious, engaged in endless diversions, yet none the less slowly journeying towards the fulfilment of the covenantal promise. No image seems to me more descriptive of the contemporary returning: some to a faith, others to a way of life, some to a place, others to a sense of peoplehood. for eighteen hundred years of dispersion, Jews prayed for freedom, for ingathering of exiles, the restoration of sovereignty, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Today they have them. If faith implies anything - faith in G-d, or in the Jewish people, or the covenant that bids one to the other as a 'kingdom of priests and a holy nation' - it implies this: that Jews having come thus far will not now disintegrate, so advanced along the journey which Abraham began nearly four thousand years ago. The inclusivist faith is that Jews, dividede by where they stand are united by what they are travelling towards, the destination which alone gives meaning to Jewish history: the promised union of Torah, the JEwish people, the land of Israel, and G-d".