There's nothing wrong with being a Christian and growing a beard. We must continue to work on transcending stereotypes by learning more about our own traditions.

The whole purpose of the covenant at Sinai is to create a society that observed the sabbatical year. It is in a land where Shmita is observed that human beings will learn to respect the Earth herself, by remembering that none of us can own her.

We must love our fellow Jews as brothers and sisters in a historic, unique collective family, and we must treat the non-Jew with the same dignity that we would wish and envision for ourselves. This is the real meaning of what it means to be "holy" in the "Holy Land" today.

In a stunning show of craven political calculation, the Senate has voted to not consider legislation that would expand background checks for firearm purchases. How ironic that in the synagogues this week we read the portion of Leviticus that contains these words: "Do not stand idly by the blood of your fellow."

The Israeli government and the international Jewish community should not be spending its precious time, energy and resources rallying for Pollard's release. Let him serve his sentence and then rejoin the community.

Last week, as the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding marriage equality for same-sex couples, I returned to the Torah portion Shemini, with its cryptic report of the tragic fate of two sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu.

It is ironic that we begin the description of the sacrificial offerings made in the ancient Tabernacle precisely as we mark the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War. The fact that the sacrifices were made by so few, and that the war was so incidental to the lives of so many others, was immoral indeed.

The cleaning out of our homes should also be a cleansing of our spirits, a renewal to the meaning of our Exodus experience and the new Creation that is spring.

In an age when maintaining long-term healthy relationships with partners and spouses seem long odds, at best, we might benefit by reading the sacrificial system of Leviticus as an ancient instruction manual on maintaining intimate human relationships.

For the eight days and seven nights of Sukkot, Jews traditionally eat and sleep in a sukkah, a temporary dwelling with a thatched roof, from which the...

I believe you have been promoting bigotry and helping to perpetrate a fraud. During both of your interviews with Pastor Joel Osteen, you let the religious leader tell your audience that Scripture calls homosexuality a sin. But you didn't ask him where the Bible says that.

You should be willing to die rather than transgress these commandments in the presence of other Children of Israel. God is God, who sanctifies you and brings you out of Egypt. God is God.

Sadly, many of us here in America reproduce this conflict's us-and-them ethos from 7,000 miles away, and so have thrown ourselves in on the side of escalation rather than resolution.

If a person is found to have real tzara'at, his clothes should be torn, his hair should be grown and he should act otherwise like a mourner. He should cry out: "I am ritually impure! I am ritually impure!" Over and over.

Leviticus essentially creates a primitive quarantine system. The idea is that the "camp" of Israel -- the tribes still wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt -- is to be kept pure.

The eight day. Moses calls for Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel. "Take a young bull as a sin-offering," he says to Aaron, "to atone for the Golden Calf."

God calls affectionately to Moses, the humble leader, from within the Tent of Meeting, saying: "Speak to the Children of Israel. Tell them when someone voluntarily brings an offering to God, it should a domesticated animal from the cattle and flocks."

From ritual sacrifice, rabbinic sages established a new form of worship -- verbal prayer -- which enabled individuals and communities to regularly express their gratitude, joy, sorrow and regret without the use of bulls, altars or priests.

When viewed through the lens of modernity, Leviticus seems to be an arcane, strange and wholly irrelevant book. It's no wonder, then, that many pastor choose to ignore Leviticus altogether.