Vayera is one of the most challenging Parshas to understand. It is filled with mysteries from start to finish. Why did Sarah laugh when told that she was about to give birth to a son at age ninety? Why did Abraham advise Avimelech that Sarah was his sister? Why did G-d spare Lot? Why did […]
How do we ever really know who we are? Why do we do the things we do? Why do we make the decisions we make? As children, we are raised in an environment where choices are made for us, and our specific circumstances and surroundings often determine how our lives are lived. As we grow […]
Bereshit. Again. Weren’t we just here? Wasn’t it just yesterday that we had recently shut down because of the pandemic Did a year really pass this quickly? Sunrise, sunset. How quickly flow the years. At least most of us are back in shul again. Still grappling with the pandemic, though.
There were Adam and Eve, in […]
The story of the Jewish people, especially after the second Temple, is about one of the great love affairs of all time, the love of a people for specific books, the books being the 5 Books of Moses. Much of the rabbinic literature, especially the tractate, Ethics of the Fathers, reads like an extended poem in […]
We’ve all seen live fireworks at one time or another. And as we know, there are typically one or two shots at a time, with colors from the one fading before another is launched into the darkened sky. And then, near the end, what happens? Right – a whole bunch of the various types of […]
Last Shabbat, for Parshat Eikev Bill spoke about Shema – to hear or to understand. Bill explained that the eye takes in all the information simultaneously; in contrast, we hear only one sound at a time and we must put things together, words forming sentences and sentences forming paragraphs, until we can understand the whole […]
In last week’s parashah we read the first chapter of the Shema. This week, we read the second chapter. There are many similarities between the two chapters. In fact, certain sentences are virtually identical. So why would the Torah, usually so cryptic, be so repetitious? If one examines the text closely, a significant […]
Parshat Vaetchanan. What an incredible Parsha. My bar Mitzvah Parsha. Okay, that’s not what makes it so incredible. But it was incredible to me to have the opportunity to chant this entire Parsha to a congregation so many years ago.
Vaetchanan means “and I pleaded”. Moses pleaded to G-d to be able to enter the […]
As many of you know by now, I will be retiring from my medical practice very soon. And no matter how much I try to line up other activities and remain productive in one way or another – docent at the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, teacher of ESL, etc, etc, the fact remains that […]
In today’s Parasha Moses describes the commandments of oaths and vows in ongoing oral law; the Israelites battle the Midianites; the tribes of Reuben and Gad negotiate with Moses to allow their people to dwell outside of the Land of Israel for the sake of their livestock and their families. In fact, Moses tells the […]
