“And Those Not With Us Here Today”

The Torah does not leave much room for choice in our relationship with God, at least not in its fundamentals. The terms of the covenant are not subject to the line-item veto of individuals and they span the generations without even soliciting the consent of those born after Sinai. We will conduct close readings of the Biblical passages that lay out this approach, engage rabbinic sources that reveal this perspective and follow up with the radical reevaluation of this entire framework that increasingly defines contemporary American Judaism.