Parshas Ki Sisa – 13+13=1
Beginning with Hashem’s name stated twice, the “thirteen middos” (“aspects” or “attributes”) of Hashem’s compassion and love are sourced in our parsha. The formula was taught to Moshe Rabbeinu by Hashem Himself after the...
Category: Religion
Tetzaveh — Flour and Oil in the Afternoon
One of the two places in the Torah that mandate the offering of an olas tamid twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, is in our parsha (Shemos 29:39)....
Terumah – Space, Matter and Meaningfulness
The building of the Mishkan, according to a beraisa in Middos and the Sefer Habahir, mirrors the creation of the world. Both accounts in the Torah, in fact, evidence parallel wordings. Much noted by...
Yisro – Consecrated Coercion
Last week, I offered the idea, based on the three Hebrew words, shiluach, yetziah and geirush, used to describe both the exodus account and a marriage’s dissolution, of Yetzias Mitzrayim as Klal Yisrael’s “divorce”...
Help Preserve the Kotel’s Kedusha
The push to balkanize the Kotel Maaravi is, as its proponents readily admit, intended as a step toward legitimizing American-style “Jewish religious pluralism” in Israel. That would be a disaster, not only because of...
Parshas Bo – Enticing the Wicked Son
When the Torah (Shemos, 12:26) recounts the question the Haggadah attributes to the “wicked son,” it states that, when our ancestors heard it, they responded by bowing down in thanksgiving. What were they thankful...
Vo’eira – History’s Foundation
It is interesting that the concept of hakaras hatov, “recognition of the good” that one has experienced, appears not only in the parsha, at the beginning of the Sefer Shemos saga whose apogee is...
Shemos – Against Your Grain
My rebbe, Rav Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, often spoke of how each of the Jewish forefathers was challenged by Hashem to act in opposition to the very characteristic that defined him. Avraham, whose middah is...
Vayechi – A Singular Kindness
Chesed v’emes, “kindness and truth,” is the term Yaakov Avinu uses to describe what he is asking of Yosef when charging his son to not bury him in Mitzrayim (Beraishis 47:29). And Rashi famously...
Vayigash — Full Circle
The wagons (agalos) that Yosef sent back with his brothers to their father (Beraishis 45:27) were intended to convince Yaakov it was indeed Yosef who was the effective ruler of Mitzrayim. They were, as...
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