Dear Reb Michael, Congratulations on the excellent piece in Lehrhaus. It’s perhaps the best piece that I have seen on the subject. Not that I agree with everything you wrote, but that is not...
In the only instance of a pun in the Torah (isha from ish doesn’t count), we find Moshe forging the nachash hanechoses, the “snake of copper,” out of that particular material because nechoshes sounds...
My late friend and once-Staten Island Ferry chavrusa Yossie Hutler, zichrono livrachah, once posed an insightful question about parshas Korach. “[In the] morning,” Moshe tells Korach and his entourage, Hashem will make His will...
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States overruled Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Agudath Israel of America welcomes this historic development. Agudath Israel has long...
The idea that the prohibition against lashon hora, “speech of evil,” includes speaking negatively about a thing, not just a person, is surprising. But the sin of the meraglim, the scouts who were sent...
Happy the elephant isn’t a person. That seeming truism was the official ruling of New York’s highest court last week, necessitated by a suit brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project aimed at freeing the...
The reflexive form of the word k’mis’onenim (“The people were mis’onenim [complaining] bitterly before Hashem” – Bamidbar 11:1) indicates that our ancestors were self-focused in their grumbling. They were mourning themselves, sorrowful (as per...
A bracha we make several times daily has an etymological connection to the nazir, the laws for whom are included in the parshah. It lies in a word in the second pasuk of that...
Residents of Israel and Gaza dodged a bullet on Sunday (May 29) — in fact a slew of bullets, and bombs and missiles. Sunday was “Jerusalem Day,” an annual celebration that commemorates Israel’s capture...
The reference in the parshah (Bamidbar, 3:4) to the fact of Nadav and Avihu’s childlessness can be read as a simple explanation for why further generations of their lines are absent from the Torah’s...
