Tzav – The Challenge of Change
The shalsheles cantillation, expressed in a long, wavering series of notes, occurs only four times in the Torah. In three, the “wavering” may reflect a wavering of will. In Beraishis 19:16, Lot, about to...
Lobstergate and the Hypocrisy of the Israeli Opposition
Some faces in Israel ought to be turning lobster-red from shame, instead of gloating over Bibi and Sara dining at a non-kosher restaurant in London on Shabbos. The opposition piled on to Israel’s First...
Vayikra – Hierarchy and Holiness
Animal sacrifices begin not only the parsha and the sefer of Vayikra but the world as we know it. Because Noach was commanded to take extra animals of certain species on the ark for...
Parshas Vayakheil – Tough Love
The kruvim, three-dimensional depictions of two winged childlike beings, a male and female, formed from the gold of the kappores, the cover of the aron, are described as “facing one another” (Shemos 37:9). The...
Parshas Ki Sisa – Reasonable but Wrong
Our ancestors’ devotion, so soon after the revelation at Har Sinai, to a physical object, the egel hazahav, the golden calf, is rightly and remarkably confounding. Obviously, like so many of the Torah’s narratives,...
Tetzaveh – Making Livings and Making Light
Most agricultural oils are produced from seeds. The olive is one of the few fruits that produce oil. And olive oil plays a major role in the Mishkan and Beis HaMikdash. It is a...
Asking “What If” Destroys Halacha
Writing in Mishpacha this week, Rav Chaim Aryeh Zev Ginsburg scolds MK Itamar Ben-Gvir for his passionate advocacy for Jewish visits to Har Habayis (the Temple Mount). Rav Ginsburg likens people who follow the...
Terumah – What’s in The Name
Although there are several explanations in various midrashim for the word li in the phrase viyikchu li (“And have them take for Me”), Rashi, famously, simply comments “lishmi” – “for My sake” [literally, “for...
Parshas Mishpatim – The Angels Were Right, But Wrong
When we think of the word na’aseh, “we will do,” it is usually in the context of the phrase na’aseh vinish’ma, “we will do and we will hear” – Klal Yisrael’s statement of commitment...
Yisro – The Barrel’s Secret
Last year, I noted what Rav Avdimi bar Chama bar Chasa says about the Sinaitic revelation, that “Hashem overturned the mountain above the Jews like a barrel [gigis] and said to them: ‘If you...