Vayikra – Prelude to Prayer

Inordinate stress is put by the Talmud on being somech geulah litfillah, placing a reference to redemption immediately before prayer, i.e. the amidah (Berachos 9b). It isn’t clear why that is so important, but...

Pekudei – Panic Today, Joy Tomorrow

The parallel in wordings between the Torah’s account of the universe’s creation and of the building of the Mishkan has been noted by commentaries. I won’t cite examples here but they abound. The late...

Vayakhel — Just Do It

It might be because last Shabbos was the yahrtzeit of my mother, Puah bas Rav Noach HaCohein, a”h. But, whatever the reason, she came to the fore of my mind when reviewing parshas Vayakhel,...

Ki Sisa — Knot Theory

The Hebrew words panim and achor (as in lifnei and acharei) are used in both a spatial and temporal sense – either as “front” and “back” or as “before” and “after.” One approach to...

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The Day After Is Now

Since that day of infamy in October, we’ve been speculating about how the Jewish world would look different, once the war was over. We deferred talking about the day after, in order to focus...

Tetzaveh – Divine Right vs. Divine Role

There’s really no such thing as a kohein. At least not the way we generally pronounce the word in conversation, with the accent placed on the first syllable. In the Torah, the stress is...

Terumah – Ulterior Merits

The aron habris, the ark of the covenant that held the luchos, the tablets of the law, consisted of three nested boxes, the middle one of wood, the outer and inner ones of zahav...

Mishpatim — Full Moon Danger

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, more than 150,000 Allied troops stormed the coast of Normandy to begin the liberation of France from the Nazis. he criteria for choosing that day included a low but...

Yisro – Experience Required

When I was a teenager, I wrote a short poem that went: All could be lies For we see with our eyes. Descartes, as I later discovered, beat me by some three centuries at...

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