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Esther requests that the Jews fast due to the danger in her plan. She recognizes that without God’s guiding hand her plan to save them would fail.

The Jews are commanded to use unleavened bread in the Tabernacle. The reason is that Egypt had invented the leavening process and one of the prime ideas behind the Torah is that we should reject Egypt, both physically and spiritually.

The Torah goes into detail about how the Tabernacle should be built. The question is why. The answer is that we have to obey the commandments to make ourselves better people. It is not up to our subjective judgment.

After the revelation of Mt. Sinai, the logical step would be to build a Tabernacle to God. But the Torah takes a detour and speaks about how to build an ethical society.

Jealousy is wanting what others have without realizing what they had to do to get that or the reason they have it. When we see someone has done well we should learn from their success, not be jealous of them.

The most common understanding of the Commandment of not taking God’s Name in vain is that we should not swear falsely. Another understanding is that we should not do commit a crime in His Name.

The 10 Commandments start with a statement that God took us out of Egypt. Why not say that He is the God who created the Heavens and the Earth? Here are two reasons for that.

The commandment to destroy any vestige of Amalek seems strange. There is no such commandment with other enemies of the Jewish people throughout our history. Why such a commandment?

Pharaoh accused Moses of lying. Moses had said that the Jews had to go three days to worship God. At no time did Moses say that they would be returning. Pharaoh misled himself into believing that they would.

The first born who were killed in Egypt were the first born of any coupling. This was to reveal the immorality of Egypt and why God needed to get the Jews out of Egypt. To get them away from an immoral society.