Shoftim – Commanded
Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker once asked students if they would rather face the vicissitudes of their lives or be transformed into totally happy pigs. A young woman raised her hand and said, “I’d...
Author: Avi Shafran
Re’ei – Survivors
Kol yimei chayecha – “All the days of your life” – is a phrase we first meet in the Torah when Hashem pronounces the fate of Adam after the sin of eating from the...
Eikev – Strangers in a Strange Land
Both remarkable and timely is a digression by the Sefer HaChinuch on a mitzvah in the parshah. The mitzvah, #431, is ahavas hager, the commandment to love a convert (Devarim 10:19). In addition to...
Vo’eschanan – Little Sins Fuel Bigger Ones
The Kotzker Rebbe likely meant it as a poignant joke when he reportedly remarked that the reason the Ten Commandments had to be both seen and heard (Chazal describe the revelation at Har Sinai...
Devarim – The Rock’s Lost Lesson
In Moshe Rabbeinu’s parting rebuke of Klal Yisrael for “not believing in Hashem” (Devarim 1:32), for all its complaining in the wake of the report of the meraglim and beyond, he refers to Hashem’s...
Matos-Mas’ei – The Final Word
Although Sefer Devarim is the final “book” of the Torah, in a sense, Sefer Bamidbar is. That is because, while Devarim includes many new laws and accounts, it also repeats some, and is thus...
Pinchas – Selfless Act, Boundless Portion?
Tzelafchad, according to one opinion, was the mekoshesh, or “wood gatherer,” who was executed for violating Shabbos. According to the Targum Yonasan (and a Midrash quoted by Tosfos in Bava Basra 119b), his act...
Chukas – Echoes of “The Snakey Thing”
It’s commonly, but erroneously, assumed that the symbol commonly used for the medical profession, a snake, or a pair of them, wrapped upon a pole, is meant as a depiction of the nachash hanechoshes...
Korach – Monkeys in the Crowd
The model for all subsequent demagogues in history, Korach told the people that his grievance was really their grievance, that he was standing up not for himself but for them. And he used snideness...
Shelach — Memento Mitzvah
It might seem peculiar, even morbid, to suggest that looking at tzitzis evokes the specter of death. But, at least for me, it does. That might be because of photographs I saw in a...
Recent Comments