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...
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...
The Embrace of Generations
by Reuven Ungar I The Remnant of the Sages- Pleitat Sofreihem In his monumental eulogy for Rav Chaim Heller, Rav Soloveitchik relates to the phrase “Pleitat Sofreihem” in the Shemoneh Esreh. Why doesn’t “Sofreihem” suffice;...
Were We Wrong About Chabad?
For decades, Chabad’s want-to-wrap-tefillin legions made us feel uncomfortable. More bluntly, we mocked them. To be sure, that was only half of the picture. We openly admired Chabad’s mesiras nefesh, and their very real...
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...
Judicial Reform Gets a Plug from a High Court Justice
Not intentionally, of course. And not from a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. Consider the following [with very minor edits in brackets]: At the behest of a party that has suffered no injury,...
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...
A Secular-Haredi Debate on Israel’s Cultural War
By Heshy Grossman and Dan Perry [Editor’s Note: The dialogue that follows is refreshing, given that too many folks these days are given to talking past each other, rather than to each other. The...
Artificial Indoctrination: AI engines seem anything but objective
AI language models appear to be programmed to favor a particular ideological slant, to assert woke doctrine as fact, and to avoid facts seen as opposing it.