Rabbi Jason Klein's Drashah for Shabbat Bereishit, 2025

“Jewish tradition has a way of ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects and to animals. The challah we cover to avoid its embarrassment that we choose to say Kiddush over wine instead of over the bread. The mountains that argued about which one of them should have been the one at which the Torah would be revealed. The big fish that we’ve heard from our Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern David [on Yom Kippur], who was in a conversation with Jonah Midrashically as they journeyed around the world together. Even the Torah Scroll itself, some communities allow to stand in as a tenth person for a minyan when it’s needed and beyond. Our tradition being creative and playful, a big takeaway from this is that if we imagine that these non-humans can express these thoughts and feelings, how much the more so should we care about the thoughts and the feelings of real, live human beings — of one another? So the many playful narratives about the moon in this week’s parsha have a way of pointing us back to the lesson that Adam, that humanity, is created in the divine image. And if we are to care about the feelings of the moon, or of the challah, then surely we must relate to one another as if we are relating to God Godself.“

Rabbi Jason Klein gave this drashah on Friday, October 17 / 25 Tishrei. Watch his full talk above. 

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