…are not prisoners of events but active shapers of them. VAYECHI: Judaism allows us to inhabit a culture of grace and hope. If we work hard enough on ourselves, we can be forgiven. FROM THE BOOK OF SHEMOT: SHEMOT: When you learn to listen to views different from your own, realising that they are not threatening but enlarging, then you…
…and Jewish thought, and encourage them to always believe that the future can be better than the present: a. God reveals His name to Moshe at the Burning Bush as Ehyeh asher ehyeh (Shemot 3:14) – literally “I will be what I will be”. God’s name is in the future tense. b. A Jewish sense of time is a radical…
…the Tabernacle itself. The Core Idea Tetzaveh is the only parsha where the name of Moshe is not mentioned at all since the first parsha of the book of Shemot (in which he is born). Here, just this once, Moshe, our hero, the leader, the liberator, the lawgiver, is off-stage. Instead our focus is on his elder brother Aharon who,…
…who lived during the thirteenth century. [4] Ibn Ezra, “long” commentary ad loc. [5] This is my paraphrase of the commentary cited in the name of R. Yitzhak Nissenbaum in Aaron Yaakov Greenberg, ed., Itturei Torah, Shemot (Tel Aviv, 1976), 269–70. [6] For R. Nissenbaum’s remarkable speech in the Warsaw Ghetto, see Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World (New York:…
…that Aharon’s rod produced almond blossoms seems to have had rich symbolism. In the Near East, the almond is the first tree to blossom, its white flowers signalling the end of winter and the emergence of new life. The almond flowers recalled the gold flowers on the Menorah (Shemot 25:31; 37:17), lit daily by Aharon in the Sanctuary. The Hebrew…
…Torah has told of two previous episodes where Moshe has faced this same challenge. One took place at Mara, almost immediately after the splitting of the Red Sea. The people found water but it was bitter. Moshe prayed to God, God told him how to sweeten the water, and the episode passed. The second episode occurred at Rephidim (Shemot 17:1–7)….
…each of us fulfilling our mission and our responsibility; and of understanding that the more we share our Judaism, the more Judaism we will have, those are messages that are still as necessary today as they ever were before. And when we do those, the spirit of the Rebbe lives on in us. There’s a remarkable Midrash in Shemot Rabbah…
…l-m-d, meaning to learn or teach. The verb does not appear even once in Bereishit, Shemot, Vayikra, or Bamidbar. In Devarim it appears seventeen times. There was nothing like this concern for universal education elsewhere in the ancient world. Jews became the people whose heroes were teachers, whose citadels were schools, and whose passion was study and the life of…
…on understanding the souls of men.” What this entire passage represents is the first intrusion of politics into the life of the family of the covenant. From the beginning of Shemot to the end of Devarim, politics will dominate the narrative. But this is our first introduction to it: Yosef’s appointment to a key position in the Egyptian court. And…
…the Book of Shemot. Question to Ponder Why do you think there are so many family fights in the book of Bereishit? The Core Idea If you want to understand what a book is about, look carefully at how it ends. Genesis ends with three deeply significant scenes. First, Yaakov blesses his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasheh. This is the blessing…