Emor – Simple Jews
The Baitusim, a sect in Talmudic times often associated with the Tzedukim (or Sadducees), had a congenial approach to establishing the date of Shavuos, which the Torah describes as the fiftieth day from a...
Author: Avi Shafran
Acharei Mos/Kedoshim – Black Like Us
The haftarah for Acharei Mos, which will be read this week for the double parsha of Acharei Mos/Kedoshim, is from Amos (9:7), where Hashem extols the Jewish people with the famous and famously strange...
Tazria/Metzora – Life is Other People
Tzara’as, the condition that occupies the bulk of parshios Tazria and Metzora, is characterized by the Talmud as a punishment for sins like speaking ill of others or stinginess at their expense. Thus the...
Shemini — Inner Space
The abundance of advertisements for gyms, weight loss products, hair restoration drugs and cosmetic surgery testifies to contemporary citizens’ obsession with physical image. To be sure, many people seek to work out or lose...
… And one more, “Shalom Aleichem and Mah Nishtana” – Ami Magazine
Rosh Chodesh Nisan would seem a propitious time for a Kiddush Hashem. And one occurred this year, when a large group of Israeli anti-government protesters, mostly secular citizens aiming to “get in the face”...
Two Pesach Pieces
A piece I wrote for the Forward about the Chametz Law in Israel can be read here. And a thought about the Haggadah and American history appeared today at Religion News Service, here. Chag...
Tzav – The Challenge of Change
The shalsheles cantillation, expressed in a long, wavering series of notes, occurs only four times in the Torah. In three, the “wavering” may reflect a wavering of will. In Beraishis 19:16, Lot, about to...
Vayikra – Hierarchy and Holiness
Animal sacrifices begin not only the parsha and the sefer of Vayikra but the world as we know it. Because Noach was commanded to take extra animals of certain species on the ark for...
Parshas Vayakheil – Tough Love
The kruvim, three-dimensional depictions of two winged childlike beings, a male and female, formed from the gold of the kappores, the cover of the aron, are described as “facing one another” (Shemos 37:9). The...
Parshas Ki Sisa – Reasonable but Wrong
Our ancestors’ devotion, so soon after the revelation at Har Sinai, to a physical object, the egel hazahav, the golden calf, is rightly and remarkably confounding. Obviously, like so many of the Torah’s narratives,...
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