The Torah teaches us that our father Avraham was told to leave his home in Mesopotamia and to travel to an unknown land, which eventually turned out to be the Land of Israel. Midrash points out to us that the entire success of Avraham’s mission in life – to spread the idea of monotheism and the universal God – was dependent on his living in the Land of Israel. The question naturally arises why this should have been so. After all, he could have been successful in so doing had he remained in Mesopotamia, which then was the center of human civilization and culture while the Land of Israel was somewhat of a backward, out -of- the- way place. READ MORE →
The rabbis were not so much critical of Noach – as he is paid the highest of compliments, throughout the Torah as a righteous person – but they were wary of him. I have often felt that this attitude is born of the idea that Rashi himself states in commenting upon the origin of Noach’s name. Rashi makes a point that the name Noach should not be construed as a derivative of the Hebrew word “nacheim” – meaning to comfort - but rather it is derived from the other Hebrew word “noach” – meaning, rest, leisure, comfortable but not comfort as in consolation. READ MORE →
All of the problems of humankind and life itself are revealed to us in this opening parsha of the Torah. Desire, greed, violence, murder, jealousy, paganism and tragic disappointment mark the events of this parsha. The human story and its history over the ages is not necessarily a pleasant one. READ MORE →
The parsha of Vayelech is the parsha that contains the smallest number of verses – only thirty – of any other parsha in the Torah. It also is the parsha that usually coincides with Shabat Shuva, the holy Shabat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The words of the parsha are part of the last testament of Moshe uttered on the day of his passing from this earth. READ MORE →
One of the shortest and smallest prashiyot of the Torah is this week’s parsha of Nitzavim. Nevertheless the parsha is one of the most important in terms of eternal messages to the people of Israel. READ MORE →
This week’s parsha describes the two very different situations in Jewish life that have been present throughout our long history as a people. One situation is when we inhabited and controlled our own land – the Land of Israel. That is clearly indicated in the opening words of the parsha – ki tavo – when you will come into your land. The second much more difficult situation is outlined again in the parsha in the bitter, lengthy and detailed description of the lot of the Jewish people in exile, scattered amongst hostile nations and violent hatreds. READ MORE →
The parsha of Ki Teitzei contains the second most numerous count of mitzvoth in the Torah, topped only by the count of mitzvoth in the parsha of Kdoshim in Chumash Vayikra. The commentators to the Torah discuss why these mitzvoth that first appear in Ki Teitzei, all of whom are ultimately derived from the granting of the Torah at Mount Sinai almost forty years earlier, find their place in the Torah here in Moshe’s final oration to the Jewish people. READ MORE →
We are all in favor of equality and justice. The goal of all democratic societies is to have, as far as humanly possible, an incorruptible and fair judicial system. Since, however, judges are only human – no matter how knowledgeable and altruistic they may be, the perfect judicial system has never yet been achieved. READ MORE →
Even though Moshe in his review of the life of the Jewish people in the desert of Sinai over the past forty years recounts all of the miracles that occurred to them, he does so not for the purpose of narrative but rather to teach an important moral lesson for all ages. And that stark lesson is that after all of the miracles that God may perform on our behalf, our fate is in great measure in our hands. And the lesson of all of Jewish history is summed up in the verse “For not by bread alone – even miraculous bread such as the manna itself – shall humans live by but rather by the word of God, so to speak, - the values, commandments and strictures of Torah shall Jews live.” All attempts to avoid this lesson, to substitute other words, ideas and ideologies for the words of Torah have turned into dismal failures. But reliance upon miracles is just as dangerous a path. My teachers in the yeshiva would say to us then pious young men that prayer helps one to become a scholar in Torah. But they emphasized that sitting and studying Torah for a protracted time with concentration and effort may help even more in the quest for true Torah scholarship. Moshe uses the constant miracles of the desert to drive home the point that much of the responsibilities of life are in our hands and our decision making processes. In essence the clear conclusion from his oration is that God helps those who help themselves. READ MORE →
Rashi points out that the blessings of Moshe to the Jewish people are based upon and mirror those of Yaakov as recorded for us at the end of the book of Bereshith. There are blessings that are eternal and always valid. There are those that are contemporary to the times in which they were given but have little relevance to other times. The blessings of both Yaakov and Moshe are of two individual tribes regarding their locations in the Land of Israel and their individual traits and characteristics as warriors, merchants, scholars, and as part of the national fabric of the Jewish society. READ MORE →
