This week’s Torah portion speaks of the mysterious lesions that appeared on the skin of those who trafficked in gossip. Their punishment was at once severe and precise: they were cast into isolation for up to three weeks, until their affliction healed.
The Torah enumerates many forms of ritual impurity. Some …
A Custom Product
My earliest memories of the last day of Sukkot is of the market place set up in front of the large Synagogue of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Brooklyn, New York. All night long, the sidewalk at 770 Eastern Parkway was a teeming marketplace of willow sales.
“Five dollars a …
The Lost Child
When I was younger my father often talked of the proverbial child who never got to school on time. If it wasn’t his pants, it was his hat. If it wasn’t his hat, it was his socks. If it wasn’t his clothing, it was his homework. There was …
Every year, we read a Torah portion called Bamidbar—in the desert—on the Shabbat before Shavuot. This portion describes the census of the Jews in the desert. Just as we count forty-nine days and then celebrate Shavuot, so should we read about the counting of the Jews and then celebrate Shavuot.
This …
Does He Need A Census?
The book of numbers opens with G-d directing Moses to take a national census,[1] which begs an obvious question. Does an All Knowing G-d require a census to know the precise number of Jews? This question is only amplified when you consider that this was the …
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 …
