Mattot-Massei
A man dies and heads toward the proverbial pearly gates. He is met along the way and told he is being given a choice between spending eternity in Heaven or in Hell. His first instinct is...
CHUKKAT THE RITUAL OF THE RED HEIFER
(and it’s what you do with it that counts)
Parsha Chukkat starts off with what seems to be, and in my mind is, a rather strange ritual. God tells Moses and Aaron to...
I would like to talk about justice, or really what might seem injustice, in certain life-or-death decisions God makes in the Torah. I am concerned with four apparently untimely deaths which, on their face,...
In the third parasha in the book of B’reishit (Genesis) God tells Avram (chapter 12 verse 1) “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land I will show you”. The language in the...
The last few verses of Psalm 146, which we recite every morning as part of P’sukei D’Zimra tell us
Adonai frees the bound
Adonai gives sight to the blind
Adonai raises those bowed down, and loves the just
Adonai...
My wife and I, along with several other people from our community, traveled to Israel recently for a wedding. Most of the people reading this essay have heard all or parts of the story of this trip/adventure....
How are Megillat Ruth and Shavuot connected?
There are several holidays when one the “megillot” included in the Ketuvim section of the TaNaKh, (the Hebrew Bible) is read in conjunction with the holiday....
Passover (Pesach) is an intriguing, and, in some ways conflicting) holiday. Some people get so absorbed in the physical preparations that they forget the real religious aspect of what we are observing...
(How does this apply today)
At the beginning of Parashat Teruma, starting at Shemot (Exodus) Chapter 25, God tell Moses to tell the Israelite people to bring God gifts as their hearts move them. These...
The second book of the Torah, Shemot, tells us that a new king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph. How could he not know Joseph? Surely, having ascended to the throne after Joseph’s death, he did not...
