Articles tagged with: Torah
Yitro – When Student Becomes Teacher
Teaching and Giving
Did you know that Jews knew and studied the Torah well before G-d gave it at Sinai? The Torah was taught to Adam, who taught it to Seth who passed it to his children till it reached Abraham, who taught it to the Jews. (1) This begs the …
Shoftim: Let The Teachers Teach
Leading By Example
“Judges and guards shall you appoint over you at all your gates.” (1) This biblical passage establishes the halachic foundation for a Jewish Judicial system. The two primary players in the system are the judges and the guards. There can be no justice without judges, who issue halachic …
Devarim: Heartfelt Thought
An Amazing Feat
It was on the first day of the month of Shevat, five weeks before his passing, that Moses sat down to teach the Torah. He had been teaching for nearly forty years; ever since descending Mt. Sinai Moses had done little, but teach. Still he began a full …
Terumah: Mobilizing The Force
Affixing The Staves
The major artifacts in the tabernacle, transported across the desert by the Levitic tribe, were equipped with large staves by which they were lifted and transported. The Torah details precise instructions on how and when the staves were to be affixed and here we encounter a curious point. …
Yitro: The Vanishing Letters
Four Reviews
Our sages taught before appearing at Sinai, G-d reviewed the Ten Commandments four times. (1) What is the significance of these four reviews and what can we learn from this in terms of the vanishing letters??
Tweet
Vayelech: Students or Contributors?
End Of An Era
The Torah is G-d’s book, given in complete form to Moses, subject to neither addition nor subtraction. Yet many questions were left unaddressed in the written Torah and later sages resolved them through independent analysis. This leaves us with a question, are we recipients of the Torah …
Shoftim: Torah or Democracy?
Disenchantment
In the summer in 2009, US citizens unhappy with health care reform, angrily voiced their displeasure with the government in town hall meetings across the United States. President Obama’s approval ratings plummeted to unprecedented lows, yet he continued to push his health care legislation. The opposition charged him with ignoring …
Vayechi: True Guardians
Protect or Destroy
Listening to media reports about Gaza and Hamas, I wondered how a terror group came to be viewed as a legitimate government. When did we start treating those who blow themselves up on buses and lob rockets into kindergartens as soldiers in a legitimate army? How did the …
