Ancient Connection – Modern Pioneers
I’ll be honest. After a week of standing in stairwells or bomb shelters with children in my arms, after a week of thinking of dear friends risking their lives to keep my family safe, after being overwhelmed with the horrors being inflicted on our brothers and sisters, I simply don’t have the strength to write […]
The centrality of Yerushalayim is a major theme in our parsha. For example, in the beginning of the parsha, we learn that when the Jewish people will first enter the Land of Israel they will be allowed to offer sacrifices in their own backyards. However, once the “place that God will choose” becomes revealed then […]
In the midst of the Torah’s discussion of the laws of ritual impurity contracted via contact with a corpse, the following phrase appears: This is the ritual (Torah): When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be impure seven days. The Talmud homiletically interprets this […]
The Land of Israel is a unique location. Most lands are merely places where people live, a setting for their lived experience. Land is inanimate. It is treated as part of one’s financial portfolio. The Land of Israel, though, is different. The Torah treats it as almost a sentient being that responds differently based on […]
The Maccabean revolt revolved around several axes. On one level, it was a fight against religious persecution. The Greeks forbade the study of Torah and certain key mitzvot. In fact, the revolt began when a Hellenized Jew was about to sacrifice an animal to a pagan deity and Matityahu stands up and kills him. On […]
Our parsha opens with the laws of the Jewish judicial system. There are to be judges in every Jewish community who are to implement justice. In addition, the High Court, located in Yerushalayim, will take the most difficult cases from all over the Land of Israel. The Sefat Emmet notes that this section about judges […]
Our parsha describes the boundaries of the Land of Israel. In the introductory verse to this section, the Torah refers to the portion that each family was to have in the Land as their “nachalah” or portion/inheritance: Instruct the Jewish people and say to them: When you enter the land of Canaan, this is the […]
This Monday we will be celebrating the 54th birthday of renewed Jewish sovereignty over the Old City of Yerushalayim. We have much to be thankful for. Yerushalayim of today is teeming with Jews and Jewish life in a way that has not existed since the days of the second Beit HaMikdash. Not for the last […]
