Kol Ramah

Parsha Talk-with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Bo [Exodus 10:1–13:16] is the third parashah in Sefer Sh’mot [the Book of Exodus]. In it is recounted the last 3 plagues and the preparations for and celebration of Pesach Mitzrayim, the observance of Passover in Egypt, which will differ from Pesach Le-dorot, the Passover commemorated by future generations. We ha...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-era [Exodus 6:2–9:35] begins with verses [6{2–3] that feature prominently in modern biblical criticism. “Elohim spoke to Moshe, and He said to him, I am YHVH. And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob by El Shaddai, and my name YHVH I did not make known to them”. At the very least, God did not appear t...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Sh’mot [Exodus 1:1–6:1] begins a new Book of the Torah, the Book of Exodus. As Eliot mentions, we move very quickly, in just a few verses, from ish [man] to bayyit [house] to shevet [tribe], to am [nation]. In the opening verses, the family story that concluded the Book of Genesis becomes the national story that...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yechi [Genesis 47:28–50:26] concludes Book of Genesis. Among the other things that come to an end are the lives of Jacob and then of Joseph. It is, perhaps, a dark ending. A book that begins with the Creation of the world ends with Joseph embalmed and placed in an aron, a box, waiting until his descendants wil...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yiggash [Genesis 44:18-47:27] is the third installment of the Joseph saga. Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers and arrangments are made for the entire family to come to Egypt, to take up residence in the Land of Goshen, where they can live apart from the Egyptians but still benefit from Joseph’s pos...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Miqqetz [Genesis 41:1-44:17] is the second of the four parashiyot which tell the story of Joseph. It begins in the court of Pharaoh, with the third set of 2 dreams. The butler now remembers Joseph and tells Pharaoh there is a Hebrew slave who can interpret his dreams. This sets in motion a chain of events which l...

Earlier this month we lost a dear friend and unique talent, Pete Sokolow. Enjoy this 2011 Radio Klezkamp interview with Mitch Mernick. Recorded at the Hudson Valley Resort and Spa, Kerhokson NY.

Parsha Talk Vayeshev with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yeshev [Genesis 37-40] is the beginning of the Joseph story, the longest extended narrative in the Book of Genesis. So even though, properly speaking, Joseph is not a patriarch, he is not a recipient of the covenant with its twofold promise of land and numerous descendants conveyed directly by God, he...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yishlach [Genesis 32:4-36:43] is, as the French might say, an embarrassment of riches. There are Jacob’s plans for seeing his brother again after 20 years, the mysterious encounter with the malakh, often translated as angel, which will acquire for Jacob a new name and a physical disability which will everafter...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yetze [Genesis 28:10–32:3] has long been my (BC) favorite, since it was the one to which I was called up to the Torah as Bar Mitzvah many years ago. As it turns out, it is also the Bat Mitzvah parashah of my wife, Carol, though not quite so many years ago. In our discussion this week we did go much beyond the...

Parsha Talk; with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Toldot [Genesis 25:19-28:9] begins with a flurry of activity, with 60 years summarized in 8 verses: there is a birth notice of Isaac, the marriage of Isaac at 40, the barrenness of Rebekah for 20 years, the entreaty on her behalf by Isaac, the difficult pregnancy, the consulation with the oracle, and finally the...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Chayyai Sarah [Genesis 23:1-25:18] opens with a summary of the years of Sarah’s life: These were the lives of Sarah, a hundred years and twenty years and seven years, the years of the lives of Sarah. It is interesting that in Hebrew “life” is a plural noun, whereas in English it is singular. Perhaps related to th...

Parsha Talk, with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. If it seems that we have just read parashat va-yera [Genesis 18-22] it is because, in a sense, we have. Chapters 21 and 22 were the Torah readings on the first and second day of Rosh Hashanah. In our conversation this week, we started at the end, with aqedat yitzchaq, the Binding of Isaac, and stayed there. Aside from an...

Parsha Talk, with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Lekh L’kha [Genesis 12-17], following on the heels of B’reishit and Noach these past two weeks, is the third in a sequence of winnowing or sifting. Taken together, they illustrate the rabbinic category of work known as bo’rer, which forbids the separation of something good from something bad on Shabbat. The firs...

Pasha Talk: with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Noach [Genesis 6:9-11:32] concerns itself primarily with the Flood in which God destroyed nearly the entire world he had so carefully created in the opening chapters of Geneis. Noah is described as a righteous person in his generation, which led the rabbis to speculate how he would have fared in a different gener...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat B’reshit [Genesis 1:1–6:8] begins the annual reading of the Torah once again. We spend some time discussing the phenomenon of reading and rereading the Torah, and how we might approach it with new eyes, with freshness, year after year. We discuss Creation, as it appears in chapter 1 and in chapter 2, we discuss A...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. It is a special edition of Parashah Talk this week since there is no regular weekly Torah Reading because of Chol Hamo’ed Sukkot; the intermediate days of Sukkot have a special Torah Reading. On Shabbat we read from Exodus 33:12-34:26, from Parashat Ki Tissa. We read the same selection on Chol Hamo’ed Pesach. In addition...

Parsha Talk - with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chseler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Ha’azinu [Deuteronomy 32:1-52] presented us with unusual difficulties, of a technological nature. Because of the way Yom Kippur fell out, we recorded during my school day, and space in my school is at a premium. Eliot askes for mechilah [forgiveness] in case I come in and out, I was reminded periodically that m...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Va-yelekh [Deuteronomy 31:1–30] is the shortest parashah in terms of verses, but in terms of words and letters it is second to V-zot Ha-b’rakhah, which is read on Simhat Torah. When Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur falls on Shabbat, it is paired with Nitzavim [read last week] 29:9–30:30, which has forty verses. Our di...

Parsha Talk, with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Nitzavim [Deut. 29:9-30:20] is the last parashah of 5782, and the third from the end of the weekly readings [V-zot Ha-b’rakhah (Deut. 33:1-34:12), the last parashah, is read on the morning of Simchat Torah (this year, Tuesday, October 18, 2022)]. Nitzavim begins with the declaration that “You stand this day, all...

Parsha Talk, with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Ki Tavo [Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8] features some texts which appear in Mishnah Sotah 7, where there is a discussion about which texts may be recited in any language, meaning a language one understands, and which must be recited in Hebrew, presumably because the ritual itself is what is important, and not so much on...

Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky with Parsha Talk, . This week’s parashah, Ki Tetze [Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19], is the most mitzvah dense, with 74 commandments in 110 verses. A number of these commandments are problematic [in no particular order, the call to destroy Amalek (25:17-19), the stubborn and rebellious son (21:18-21), marriage with a woman captured in war (20:10-...

Parsha Talk with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Parashat Shoftim [Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9] is the fifth parashah in the Book of Deuteronomy. It has a mitzvah density of about 40%, according to Eliot, who found this statistic in the Koren Torah with Rashi. Mitzvah density is the ration of mitzvot [commandments] to the number of p’suqim [verses]. So there are a lot of mit...

Parsha Talk: with Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Jeremy Kalmanofsky and Barry Chsler. Parashat Re’eh [Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17] is the beginning of the legislative core of Deuteronomy, which will extend over the next few weeks until the beginning of Parashat Ki Tavo [read this year on September 17]. One might look at it as the foundation of Israelite religious life, with laws calling for the centralization...

Rabbis Eliot Malomet, Barry Chesler and Jeremy Kalmanofsky discuss this week's parsha. Parashat Eqev [Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25], the third parashah of the book, has its share of quotables. The second paragraph of the Shema, recited by the faithful twice each day, is found here [Deuteronomy 11:13–21], as is the verse at the heart of the second blessing of Birkat Ha-mazon [Grace After Meals] [8:10], a...