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.”...
Category: Jewish World
Metzora – Mitigating the Miser’s Mindset
Nega’im, “plagues” that consist of certain types of spots of discoloration that appeared on the walls of a house after Klal Yisrael entered their land, signaled tzarus ayin, literally “cramped-eyedness,” what we would call stinginess....
My Father’s Matzo
A Pesach -themed piece of mine appeared in the Boston Globe and can be read here. If you’re denied access, just let me know ([email protected]) and I’ll happily share a PDF.
Tzav – The Import of the Ashes
An interesting Midrash is cited by Rav Yosef Nechemia Kornitzer (1880-1933), a great-grandson of the Chasam Sofer who served as the av beis din of Cracow before World War II. The Midrash is found...
Pekudei – One Thing Leads to Another
It’s intriguing that, just as Chazal place importance on being masmich geulah litfillah – placing a reference to redemption immediately before prayer, i.e. the amidah (Berachos 4b, 9b) – we find something similar in...
Two Purim Pieces
My Ami column for the Purim issue can be read here. And a piece I wrote for Religion News Service is here. A happy and meaningful Purim to all! AS
Terumah – Sanctifiers
The word mikdash in the pasuk “They shall make for Me a mikdash so that I may dwell among them” (Shemos 25:8) should, by reason, be mishkan, as various meforshim point out. It is,...
Yisro — Iron and Irony
I’ve long fixated on a phrase Yisro uses. When he rejoins Moshe and joins Klal Yisrael, he declares why, although he had been a guru in countless cults, he came to the conclusion that...
Bishalach – The Nation Newborn
I’ve always found it delightful that the term we use for when the amniotic sac ruptures, releasing the fluid within and beginning the birth process, is “breaking of the waters.” Because the birth of...
Vo’eira – The Seed’s Decay is All We See
It’s all too easy to disassociate the beginning of a parsha from the end of the preceding one. But Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin, in LaTorah UlaMoadim, sees Hashem’s declaration at the opening of Vo’eira...
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