Rabbi Steven Wernick

June 29 I turned 59. My spirit hasn't gotten the memo. My body has read every page.

This week's Torah portion, Matot-Masei, contains 42 stops the Israelites made in the wilderness. Nearly half of them appear nowhere else in the entire Bible — no story attached, no miracle, no explanation. Just a name.

Rebbe Nachman says those unnamed stops are where the soul does its deepest work. Crisis produces story. Endurance produces character. And endurance rarely gets a name.

Last summer I took my wife to Winnipeg and Minneapolis. The house I grew up in. The cemetery. Shaarey Zedek on my 45th Bar Mitzvah anniversary, without planning it.

This week at the Shalom Hartman Institute, our cohort mapped our faith journeys. The parashah had already asked the question.

New piece in the Times of Israel — link in bio.

Shabbat Shalom.

It's been a week since 60k people filled Bathurst St, and I'm still sitting with it. Not the flags or the chants -- though those mattered. What I keep coming back to is a comment someone left in my post that day. Five words, with a question mark carried a sneer: "This is a community afraid?!" I've spent the week with that comment and the week's Torah reading. What I found surprised me.

More on my Times of Israel blog "We are not Grasshoppers." And my Shabbat sermon www.youtube.com//videos.

At our Tikkun Layl Shavuot last week, Bruce Elman — retired law professor, dean, and Constitutional law expert — asked a question I'd never considered: Why does the Ninth Commandment use two different words for "false witness"?

In Exodus: sheker — a deliberate lie.
In Deuteronomy: shav — something more insidious. A misleading frame. A true fact deployed to deceive.

That distinction has never felt more urgent. Our new Times of Israel piece explores what the Torah knew about misinformation — and what Yossi Klein Halevi is saying we need to hear about the narrative war being waged against Israel and the Jewish people.

Go to my Times of Israel Blog to read the entire piece. Link in comments.

The Blogs: They Argue Narrative. We Argue Fact. What Torah Knew From the blog of Steven C. Wernick at The Times of Israel

At our Tikkun Layl Shavuot last week, Bruce Elman — retired law professor, dean, and Constitutional law expert — asked a question I'd never considered: Why does the Ninth Commandment use two different words for "false witness"?

In Exodus: sheker — a deliberate lie.
In Deuteronomy: shav — something more insidious. A misleading frame. A true fact deployed to deceive.

That distinction has never felt more urgent. Our new Times of Israel piece explores what the Torah knew about misinformation — and what Yossi Klein Halevi is saying we need to hear about the narrative war being waged against Israel and the Jewish people.

Go to my Times of Israel Blog to read the entire piece. Link in comments.

Http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/they-argue-narrative-we-argue-fact-what-torah-knew/