• 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Getting Egypt Out of the Jews

    פרשת תזריע / כ”ז באדר ב’ תשפ”ב

    In Parshat HaHodesh the first thing that the Torah states is the Korban Pesach (The Pascal Sacrifice). This was to get the Jews to look at Egyptian society as not only foreign but as dangerous to their spiritual well being as a nation.

  • The Power of Speech

    פרשת תזריע / כ”ו באדר ב’ תשפ”ב

    The power of speech can be greater than we think. When we say bad things about people the damage can cause actions that are beyond anything we could imagine. That’s why the Torah states we should nip it in the bud as soon as possible.