IT'S EASIER FOR A CAMEL TO FIT THROUGH A QUIDDITCH GOAL...

Harry Potter and the magic of Torah: Learning a Torah portion lesson from the boy wizard. (Rabbi David Zauderer, July 24, 2003, Jewsweek)

With all the hoopla and fascination surrounding the latest addition to the Harry Potter series, you would think that all this supernatural stuff about wizards, Hogwarts, and strange freaky things like The Letters From No One and Quidditch, were something new! Well, I have to tell you that I just picked up a book in which I found described some of the strangest, almost magical, supernatural things--just the type of stuff you'd expect to find in a Harry Potter adventure. In it, you'll read about a totally red cow whose ashes have the ability to purify those who have come in contact with the dead, a mysterious roving rock that provides water whenever you hit it or talk to it, a copper serpent on a flagpole that cures people who were bitten by a serpent merely by looking at it--only this book is well over 3000 years old!

That's right, it's the Torah. The best-selling book of all time (until Harry Potter came along!) [...]

So where am I going with all this? The great medieval commentaries explain that the entire purpose of the overt miracles that the Jewish people experienced in the desert, and that were subsequently recorded in the Torah for us to read about and study, was in order that we should realize that, ultimately, everything that happens in this world, including all of nature, is an expression of God's will, and that God is very much a part of our lives.

There's a very fine line in a sermon between making it topical and rendering it trivial--we'll let you judge this one. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 24, 2003 7:10 PM