Articles in Parsha Insights
With G-d’s Help
The Torah tells us to appoint judges and guardians at the gates of our cities. The city’s gathering place was usually at the gates, making it the fitting place for the courthouse and police station. However, Jewish scholarship has long maintained that there is a parallel teaching here. We are …
A Life of Seasons
When I lived in California people complained that they missed the seasons. I always wondered about that. Having come from the East Coast, I often told them that if they were looking seasons, I could tell them exactly where to find it. They came to California for sunshine so why …
My Shabbat
Today we have Myoffice, Mydrive, my-everything, so why not My-Shabbat?
At first blush, it ought to be our Shabbat, or most appropriately G-d’s Shabbat. How can we claim Shabbat for ourselves?
The answer is that we each have the capacity to enhance our Shabbat. Our sages wrote that only he who toils …
A Shabbat Fast
It is forbidden to fast on Shabbat. In fact, if we fast on Shabbat (even with halachic sanction) we must fast on a different day to atone for fasting on Shabbat. This is why the fast of Tishah Be’av—the ninth of Av, is postponed when it falls on Shabbat —as …
Life Journeys
We are all on a journey, the journey of life. Although our journeys are similar in many ways, each journey is unique. Have you ever wondered what makes my journey different from yours? What seminal event occurred in our nascent years that made me embark on a different path from …
Fasting And Passover
What do the seventeenth of Tamuz, the ninth of Av, and the first day of Passover have in common? They always fall on the same day of the week.
How does that make any sense? The first day of Passover represents the redemption of our ancestors from Egypt that sparked their …
A Shlemiel
A shlemiel is a clumsy person who always stumbles and unwittingly finds his way into mishaps. It is Yiddish slang that is meant to be a play on the word shlimazel, another Yiddish aphorism. Shlimazel is a compound of two Hebrew words, shelo-mazel, without luck. A luckless person who always …
The Whip
The whip is usually an instrument of punishment, but it can also be a gift. Teachers of old used the whip to administer corporeal punishment. However, the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, once wrote about a teacher that was beloved by his students. This teacher never used the …
