Here’s a video of this week’s Torah Thoughts read by the Rabbi if you’d prefer not to read it: Torah Thoughts
For a larger, printable version, click here: Torah Thoughts
Torah Thoughts Acharei Mot/Kedoshim
This Friday night, Cantor Frank and I are working on the first ever emoji Shabbat at Congregation Shir Shalom and probably in the history of the world. Why emojis? The Torah has been translated into well over one thousand languages, most famously the Greek translation called the Septuagint, for the seventy translators involved, and the Targum, or Aramaic translation. Each translation offers new insights into how we think and understand our holy book, because every language has its own strengths and weaknesses and allows for different modes of communication.
For those of you not familiar with emojis, let me take a moment to explain what I am referring to. Emojis are the different types of faces and icons connected to cell phone keyboards. They started out as combinations of punctuation marks that resembled things like smiley or frowning faces (i.e. a colon placed beside a right parenthesis would create the effect of a smiley face) and have more recently evolved to actual pictures that you can select on a computer or phone. While emoji is not a spoken language, it is certainly a language, and, as such deserves an opportunity to interpret our Torah in new and different ways. I am most excited about the way emoji can convey emotion. The traditional text of the Torah often hides emotions, leaving us to read between the lines in how our ancestors were actually feeling in any given story. Not so with emojis, where emotions are front and center. To demonstrate what I am talking about I would like to continue in emoji about the Torah portion –
Last Updated on 05/04/2017 by wpadm