The headline caught a huge amount of attention: In Israeli first, woman chosen as sole spiritual leader of Orthodox community. The article, and countless other versions of the same, reports that Rabbanit Shira Marili...
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...
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...
For decades, more education was presumed to be the antidote to anti-Semitism. People with more years of education showed less hostility to Jews in survey after survey. Jews and their non-Jewish allies placed their...
My late dear friend Yossie Huttler, a”h, with whom I often studied Daf Yomi on our Staten Island ferry commute, once asked me a question about parshas Acharei Mos. Rashi, he pointed out, cites...
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...
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...
Silly, you say. I’m not Yanky because my grandfather is not R. Chaim, shlit”a. You’re showing your age. Today, you can be whatever you want, just by identifying. If I wanted to, I should...
