Two Paths to the Happy End of History
Between the lines of the terrible description in parshas Bechukosai of what will happen if Klal Yisrael abandons the mitzvos of Hashem lie subtle hints to the limits and end of those curses. The...
Between the lines of the terrible description in parshas Bechukosai of what will happen if Klal Yisrael abandons the mitzvos of Hashem lie subtle hints to the limits and end of those curses. The...
Hasidim, yeshivas and the truth By AVI SHAFRAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |- Opinion MAY 02, 2021 AT 5:00 AM There’s been a full-court press of late against Hasidic education in New York by...
A strange and strangely familiar phrase is found in Rashi, commenting on the Torah’s introduction of the account of the mekalel, the blasphemer, with “And he went out” (Vayikra, 24:10) Rashi, quoting Rabi Levi...
A piece I wrote about my late father-in-law’s friendship with the celebrated novelist Herman Wouk — whose second yahrtzeit was last Shabbos — appeared in Forward last week. It can be read here.
It’s bad enough that the person whose divisive sins caused him to contract tzora’as (a physical condition conferring tum’ah and sometimes mistakenly identified with leprosy) has to sit apart from society, but he is...
Even those of us with limited exposure to farm animals can easily differentiate between a cow and a donkey. Which leads Rashi to explain that when the Torah refers to our need to differentiate...
An essay of mine about what the experiences of two Jews during the Holocaust on Pesach might have to teach us about the present appeared in the Wall Street Journal on erev Shabbos. It...
The essay below was originally published in The Jewish Observer in 1988. Questions, questions everywhere. At the Seder, that is. There are the proverbial Four, of course, but they lead to a torrent of...
The korban todah, or “thanksgiving” offering described in the parsha (Vayikra 7:12), according to the Gemara (Brachos 54b), citing Tehillim 107, is the proper response to one of four categories of danger (though other...
The word “sacrifices” used for korbanos, the mainstay topic of parshas Vayikra, is a misnomer. Korban doesn’t carry the meaning of “giving up something.” Its most accurate, if awkward, translation would be “bringer of...
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