Personal Parsha Prose

In this week’s Parsha, Parshas Matos Masai, the thirty-third chapter of Sefer Vayikra provides a repetitively phrased detailing of the travelling of Bnei Yisrael. They traveled here. They travelled there. They travelled here. They travelled there, and so forth and so on.  Not surprisingly, the great list of journeying begins in Mitzrayim: “They set out from Ramses in the first month…” However, rat...

The immediate thought when one sees a title like “Do You Stand Out” for Parshas Pinchas is that it is an obvious grab at a Dvar Torah. The parsha opens with Hashem publicly commending Pinchas for standing up for His honor. Pinchas’ actions, as the commentaries relay, could, with just a slight variance of moment, with a slight shift in intent, have been a crime. However, because his intentions were...

Parshas Chukat Balak: Unseen But Very Present Dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Chana Zelda bat Gittel Yita,  Chaya Sarah bas Esther Leah, Moshe Aaron ben Necha Itta, Binyamin ben Simcha, and Yaakov ben Esther Malka. And L'ilui Neshama Masha Frayda bas Binyamin.   Let me start this week’s parasha piece of with a question: Do you feel puzzled, on some level, by the current surge in anti-semit...

Here is a question on Parshas Korach…  The story of Korach begins like this: “Korach son of Yitzhar son of Kehat son of Levi took himself aside, together with Dathan and Aviram sons of Eli’av, and On son of Pelet, descendants of Reuben. They confronted Moshe together with 250 men from the Israelites, including the princes of the community, summoned for the meeting, and other men of repute. They as...

This week’s parsha, Parshas Shelach, contains one of the most well-known stories of Bnei Yisrael in the desert – the story of the spies. Actually, I prefer the term scouts, so I will use that henceforth because it is more accurate as to what their initial endeavor was meant to be.  They were checking out the land that they were going to conquer…and then it became more of the conceptual idea of spi...

This week’s parsha post will be rather quirky because, alas, I am still working my way through my pile of grading… It’s the raw side of being a teacher. Speaking of teachers, I see a particularly easy segue into this week’s Dvar Torah: How do we know that Moshe Rabbeinu was the first of Klal Yisrael’s teachers? It’s right there in pasuk 16:14 – “I cannot carry all this people by myself, for it is...

An additional thought that came up as I was reading the pasuk: “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting and let them take their place there with you.” I saw commentaries on the use of “lee” to Me, but as I read I was struck by the incredible compassion within Hashem’s response. He do...

Parshas Naso: Gifts with Thought Dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Masha Frayda bas Goldie, Chana Zelda bat Gittel Yita,  Chaya Sarah bas Esther Leah, Moshe Aaron ben Necha Itta, Binyamin ben Simcha, and Yaakov ben Esther Malka.   Parshas Naso is the parsha at the end of which the Princes of the Tribes of Israel bring their gifts to the Mishkan. The gifts are, well, they are a bit of a challenge...

What do the words “mom” and “if” have in common? Not much in the English language, but in Hebrew they are written with the same two letters: Aleph and Mem. The connection of Eem (if) and Eim (mom) is a wonderful lesson in both parenting and hashgafa (Jewish thought). Parashat Bechukosai begins, for the first 10 verses, by describing the amazing, successful society that Israel will have if they liv...

In the province of Quebec, when a couple gets married their names remain the same. From one perspective, this is a lot easier than all the paperwork to change one’s legal name after marriage. From a different perspective …it sometimes leads to other bureaucratic conundrums (so what name to I put on this cheque to pay my kid’s friend’s mom back!). While here in Quebec this is actually a legal matte...

You might have heard, here or there, that a big part of Jewish life is to be holy. Are you there? Yeah, me neither. The fact is that most of us must, must think of passages with commandments for being holy as sources of inspiration and aspiration. I am inspired to aspire to holiness. I want it, and, more than that, I want to want it even more. The ever-prevailing question, however, is how do I tru...

When most people write about or discuss this week’s parsha, Tazriah/Metzorah, they immediately make it clear that the affliction most-often translated as leprosy is a spiritual affliction and not the unfortunate disease carried by the Mycobacterium leprae bacteria. Because of its sever physical manifestation, leprosy was, for most of history, a disease for which people were shunned – which makes i...