I was walking with a friend, one Shabbat, and as we reached the crosswalk, he bent to push the button to stop the traffic. I reminded him it was Shabbat, when we don’t use electronics. Instead, I suggested we relax patiently and chat until the light changes. It was Shabbat …
Read the full story »
Living is giving is one of the themes of this week’s Torah portion. Joseph rose to prominence in Egypt because of his ability to interpret Pharoh’s dreams. He accurately predicted a seven-year period of plenty when all harvests would be bountiful. The Middle East would enter a phase of incalculable …
Josef and His Brothers
“And He called out ‘Remove everyone from before me’ and there remained no one with them when he revealed himself to his brothers… And he said, I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt.” Two questions present themselves a) why did he call for everyone …
On Simchat Torah we read the last passage of the Torah, but we don’t stop for even a moment when we finish reading the Torah. Instead, we turn around and start over immediately from the first verse. There are many celebrations on Simchat Torah, but they come before we read …
Tzav: Fighting Evil
We are surrounded by evil; every so often, it rears its ugly head as it did on Simchat Torah—the October 7 massacre. Pure evil raped Jewish mothers, burned Jewish babies alive, mutilated their fathers, and beheaded their neighbors. Pure evil burned loving couples clinging to each other, to …
These past two days have been the most difficult for our people in the last fifty years. It was Simchat Torah, a time for rejoicing, yet it was a time of horror. Nearly a thousand members of our family were brutally murdered, more than a hundred were taken hostage, and …
