Author: Avi Shafran

Pinchas – The Dark Side of the Moon

Have you ever wondered why, in the Mussaf Amidah of a Jewish leap year (when there are two Adars), we add the phrase ulichaparas posha, “and for atonement for sin”? It is a 13th...

Balak – Judge, Jury and Executioner

Moshe Rabbeinu couldn’t recall the halacha about the proper course of action when encountering a Jewish man engaging intimately with a non-Jewish woman (Sanhedrin 82a).  Pinchas had to remind him that Moshe himself had...

Chukas – The Marrow of the Matter

Our ancestors were divinely commanded to gaze at a copper representation of a snake. In order to end a plague of snakebites born of their complaint about the mon (Bamidbar 21:8). Chazal explain that...

Korach- Schism and Stereopsis

His “eye,” not his “eyes.” That’s what Chazal point to with regard to how a pikei’ach (perceptive person) like Korach could undertake a shtus, a “stupidity” like fomenting a rebellion against Moshe Rabbeinu. The...

Shelach Lecha – Meaningful Metaphor

In their declaration that the conquest of Cna’an will proceed successfully, Yehoshua and Calev employ an odd metaphor: The idolatrous residents of the land, they say, will be vanquished because “they are our bread”...

A Life Lesson

Mishpacha Magazine asked me to contribute, as part of a symposium, a short essay on the topic of a lesson I would want my children to internalize. The symposium was recently published, and my...

Beha’aloscha – Class-ic Complaint

Rashi, quoting the Gemara, understands the nation’s “weeping about its family” (Bamidbar 11:10) as referring to ‘matters of family’ – to the fact that relatives who were once permitted to be joined  in marriage...

Naso – Chinuch 101

Haftaros always have some connection to something in the parsha, but few are as explicitly related to what was read from the Torah as the haftarah of parshas Naso, which haftarah , like part...

Bamidbar – No Date, No Place

We read parshas Bamidbar (Bimidbar, if one wants to be didactic) on the Shabbos before Shavuos. The meaning of that juxtaposition might lie in the  word by which the parsha is known ((however one...

Behar – A Saying That Says Much

There are a number of common English aphorisms that parallel (or are sourced in) Talmudic statements. What Chazal said in Avos (1:15), “Say little and do much” echoes in “Actions speak louder than words.”...

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