Jonathan Weinkle, at The Blogs

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Jan 22, 2023, 11:44 PM

Originally delivered as the d’var Torah, Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, Shabbat Va-era, 5783, January 21, 2023. Between Moshe’s initial failure to win over the Israelites to his leadership and the start of the plagues, the Torah interrupts with – genealogy? And an incomplete one at...

Dec 4, 2022, 8:17 PM

Two Heads Are Better Than One

There are two strange words at the beginning of Parashat Vayetze. Bereshit 28:11 begins, “Vayifga’ bamakom.” “And he peh-gimel-‘ayin in/on/at the place.” That’s a strange verb. Most translations of this verse say something like, “And he came upon the place,” or “And he alighted there.” ...

Oct 4, 2022, 2:09 PM

Risk, Repentance, and Reward

One morning in my naval medics’ class, I walked into the classroom to find that my friend Tzion Bublil had written the following on the chalkboard: What is the only disease that is 100% fatal? Life. How easily we forget. Most of us conduct our...

Sep 15, 2022, 11:36 PM

Juvenal delinquents

Andrew Silow-Carroll’s op-ed last week (‘Quiet quitting,’ the sudden trend in work, sounds sort of … Jewish? (Hear me out.)) took me back to my undergraduate days at Pitt. There, in a course on satire, I discovered that the Roman satirist Juvenal felt much the...

Jun 20, 2022, 7:31 PM

Forget about being “cancelled” on social media, suspended from work or losing a book deal; when Miriam used a racial slur in Parashat Beha’alotecha, she was punished with leprosy. I know, the usual interpretation is that she was being punished for speaking lashon hara, true...

May 6, 2022, 3:24 PM

Kubler-Ross and the Kohen Gadol

There is a truism that we don’t speak ill of the dead. In Judaism that truism is anchored in the fact that last week’s parsha and week’s are often joined in a “double” parsha – Aharei Mot-Kedoshim. “After death – holies.” Usually this is understood...

Jan 17, 2022, 7:21 PM

The late Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Like most things Yogi said, his famous quotation was a malapropism, a fumbling of a more conventional truism about a particular individual belting the notes that mercifully signal the end of an opera....

Jan 9, 2022, 9:17 PM

Darkness and Dawn

This post is a continuation of “Wood, Fire, Water” and “Blood In the Water” from the previous two weeks. The beginning of Parashat Bo feels like the kind of long slide into the abyss I wrote about two weeks ago. With the plague of fiery...

Dec 31, 2021, 11:57 PM

Blood in the Water

Early in the pandemic, we said and did a lot of things that made little sense. Recommendations changed almost daily. We gravely took specific precautions that turned out to be useless, like hanging plexiglass shields and buying stores out of toilet paper. And we talked...

Dec 28, 2021, 6:49 PM

Wood, Fire, and Water

Parashat Shmot 5782, 20 Tevet/December 24, 2021 It was the smokiest backyard fire I have ever built. We had an unseasonably warm, dry day in the middle of last week. Through sheer force of will I caught up on work, cleaned up after the dog,...

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About Me

Jonathan Weinkle MD, FAAP, FACP is a primary care-physician in a community health center in Pittsburgh. He is not a rabbi, though he has often been accused of being one. He is an amateur singer-songwriter, teaches at both Chatham University and the University of Pittsburgh, and is the author of the book Healing People, Not Patients. For a complete archive of his writings, plus media, event listings, and even source sheets for further learning, visit healerswholisten.com.

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