Wishing & Coping

By: Faith Fogelman

June 19, 2010

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Incensed

By:Rabbi Michael Levy

June 12, 2010

Little Willie was a chemist.
Little Willie is no more.
What he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4.
(http://www.inorganicventures.com/tech/chemistry-jokes)

    Twelve-year-old boys (including me, decades ago) chuckled, imagining Little Willie’s short-lived dismay, as he realized his mistake.  Underlying the poem, however, are certain assumptions we make about the physical world. 

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Why Dever?

By:Amos Alter

June 05, 2010

In this week’s Torah portion, G-d is angry with the Children of Israel, and tells Moshe,  “I will smite them with pestilence and destroy them,” (Num. 14:12). The word dever, pestilence, seems superfluous.  It is the fact, not the method, of destruction that is important here.  Why was pestilence the method of destruction that was to be used?  In particular, why did Moshe have to know that this was the threatened method of destruction?

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D’var Torah

By:Mark Hus

May 29, 2010

  I believe that Parshat Beha’alotechah gives us much direction as to how we are expected to act towards others who are not physically and/or religiously the same as we.  In a d’var torah I prepared more than a decade ago, I discussed that fact that as we near the end of this week’s parsha, Moshe’s father-in-law, without any stated reason, advises Moshe that: “I will not [continue to] travel with you; rather to my own land and my birthplace will I go” (Bamidbar 10:29).  Moshe beseeches his father-in-law not to forsake him and the Jewish people, (Bamidbar 10:30).  I believe that subsequent text suggests that Moshe’s father-in-law relented.  Yet, no explanation is offered as to why he had felt the need to leave or, for that matter, what convinced him to, just as suddenly, change his mind.

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Manoach and the Mysterious

By:Ron Platzer

May 22, 2010

   In a surprising opening to an essay for Holocaust Remembrance Day, Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo writes: “It is time to stop justifying God.  Morally speaking his ways are sometimes inexcusable. . . . God is too great to be justified.”

    In this week’s haftorah, which opens  the equally surprising Samson story,  the message may be that the ways of God are too awesome and mysterious to explain.

    Yet, Samson’s father, Manoach,, although he  cannot comprehend or deal with the great and mysterious, wants, like most mortals,  to understand the extraordinary, to comprehend the incomprehensible

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D'var Torah

By:Amos Alter

May 15, 2010

    The last Aliyah in this week’s Sedrah discusses in exquisite detail  the respective functions of the Kohanim and of the Levi’im, specifically the subtribe of Kehat, in the dismantling of the Mishkan whenever the nation would break camp and move to another site.  However, the subject of reassembly of the disassembled Mishkan upon encampment is never mentioned by the Torah.

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Dvar Torah Parashat Emor

By:Michael Laufer

May 01, 2010

In this week’s parsha, Emor, perek 23 deals with all the holidays, beginning with Shabbat, Pesach, sefira/Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Succot. For each of the holidays the Torah mentions the prohibition of work, the offerings of the day, and the special mitzvot of the day (Matzah, succah, etc.)

The description of the holiday of Shavuot stands out in two ways:
1) The holiday is mentioned in the context of counting the seven weeks of sefira from the time of the Omer sacrifice, as opposed to all the other holidays, where a specific date is mentioned.

2) The last pasuk in the section says “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not remove completely the corners of your field as you reap and you shall not gather the gleanings of your harvest; for the poor and the proselyte shall you leave them; I am Hashem your G-d”: (23:22)

Why does the Torah mention the laws of peah and leket (leaving the corner of the field and the gleanings for the poor) in the context of the holidays and specifically in the context of the holiday of Shavuot, especially since they were just mentioned in the previous parsha? (See Kedoshim 19:9)

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D'var Torah

By:Berniard J. Kabak

April 24, 2010

 How many times do the Ten Commandments appear in the Torah?  Klutz kashe!  The answer is simple: twice, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

 But wait, not so fast.  In Vayikra Rabbah 24:5, Rabbi Levi maintains that each of the Ten Commandments appears also in parashat Kedoshim. ...

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Mida K’neged Mida – The Punishment Fits the Crime

By:Yoni Teleky

April 16, 2010

Our parsha discusses the plague of tzora’as, which can appear on people’s skin, on their clothing, or in the walls of their homes. While the Torah does not explicitly state what causes a person to have tzora’as, Rashi gives one possible cause—lashon hara. The Gemara in Arichin (16A) goes further. It includes lashon hara as a cause, but lists six other aveiras or sins that could lead a person to suffer from this affliction, bringing proof texts from tanach for each cause. I believe that in each case, we can see a logical reason why tzora’as might be a punishment for the sin in question. They are all cases of “mida k’neged mida,” or the punishment fits the crime.

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Getting “Practical” about the Countdown to Shavuot

By:Yoel Epstein

April 10, 2010

 About six weeks ago, just after Purim, the Jewish People began preparing for Pesach. During the summer, starting with the fast of the 17 of Tammuz ,the three weeks of mourning will commence, which culminate in the 9th of Av. Finally, on the first of Elul, our people will begin a 40 day period of return to God, culminating in the Day of Atonement. But just fifteen days, ago we began the longest preparatory period of the Jewish calendar: the seven weeks of the Omer that lead up to the holiday of Shavuot. If the significance of a day can be deduced from the time it takes to prepare for it, then Shavuot may be one of the most significant days of the year. Just what are we preparing for and how do we prepare for it?

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