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...
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...
What an abrupt transition, from the miracles and wonders of the earlier parshios of Sefer Shemos to this week’s list of prosaic, painstaking laws. But, just as every letter in the Torah is necessary...
As we read about the shocking hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, TX, Rabbi Seth Farber used the event as an opportunity to yet again attack the Rabbanut Ha-Rashit in Times of...
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”...
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...
Shalach, the root of the word of the parshah’s title, is used elsewhere regarding the exodus from Mitzrayim (e.g. shalach es ami). So are the words yetziah (e.g. Shemos, 20:2) and geirush (e.g. ibid...
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...
There are always people who do more than complain. They contribute to rectifying bad situations. Sometimes it takes a little time to find them, or for good ideas to gel into action. Here are...
[Author’s note: Tragically, the prediction that I made in the penultimate paragraph has already become a reality with the suicide of one of the victims. No one need to attribute any prophetic powers to...
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...