פרשת אחרי מות – י”ב בעומר / כ”ז בניסן תשפ”ב
Today is Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and Heroism in Israel. The true defeat of the Nazis is not that we survived but that we survived as Jews and will continue to be Jews in spite of their evil.
Author: Shlomo Bar-Ayal
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Personal Morality Before Public Prayer
פרשת אחרי מות – י”א בעומר / כ”ו בניסן תשפ”ב
After discussing the importance of the sacrificial rites, the Torah returns to discussing personal morality. This is emphasize that what we do privately is more important than what we say publicly.
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The Power of Evil Speech
פרשת מצורע / ז’ בניסן תשפ”ב
The Torah stresses how bad lashon Hara, evil speech is. One could make the case that it is the root of much evil in the world. People do not realize the damage they can do with their speech.
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The Exodus & The Founding Fathers
פרשת מצורע / ו’ בניסן תשפ”ב
The 2 rejected ideas for the symbol of the US were the Jews crossing the Red Sea and Jefferson’s idea for it to picture the Jews in the wilderness being led by a pillar of fire. Jefferson’s idea was that leaving Egypt was only the beginning, a lot work had to yet be done.
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The Importance of Ritual
פרשת מצורע / ה’ בניסן תשפ”ב
The real question of the wicked son is why to we need all this ritual to celebrate Passover. Can’t we just do a simple ceremony and get it over with? The answer of course is that we need the ritual since without we will forget why we were brought out and made into a people.
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Don’t Ignore the Obvious
פרשת מצורע / ד’ בניסן תשפ”ב
When the wise son asks his question at the Seder we give him a seemingly meaningless answer. He asks for the details of the laws and customs of Passover. We seem to give him a glib response, just don’t eat anything after the Afikoman. Is this glib or is this a deeper response?
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It Takes a Community
פרשת מצורע / ג’ בניסן תשפ”ב
The main event in the celebration of Passover is the eating of the Pascal Sacrifice. This is a lamb and it is impossible to completely eat it unless you are with a group. The problem is that there can be nothing leftover. Thus the Torah is forcing us to form communities in order to carry out this celebration.
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What Happens When You Lose the Minyan
פרשת מצורע / ב’ בניסן תשפ”ב
What happens when you only have ten during davening and one leaves in the middle? We had such a situation and the solution within Jewish Law is that we continue as if we have a minyan to the next major stopping point.
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From Unique to Universal
פרשת תזריע / כ”ט באדר ב’ תשפ”ב
In the Jewish year Nisan is the 1st month & Tishri is the 7th. But the “Jewish New Year” is in Tishri. The truth is that Nisan is month when the Jewish people came into being and Tishri is the anniversary of the Creation of the world.
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Preparing the Next Generation
פרשת תזריע / כ”ח באדר ב’ תשפ”ב
This week’s Parsha starts with the commandments concerning childbirth. It stresses the necessity of giving a Jewish baby boy a Brit Milah. At the Brit Milah we traditionally say that he is small now, soon he will be big and should be big in Torah and good deeds.