Monthly Archives: May 2016

Shabbat La’Hashem

Who’s in charge of holiness (k’dusha) in the world? G-d or people? In this week’s reading, we are introduced to the Shmita, the sabbatical year. The Torah Sabbatical year is not about crop rotation. It’s about the land having its … Continue reading

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2nd Chances? On pesach sheni & my father’s yahrzeit

אם תחפשו בגוגל “פסח שני” תמצאו פירושים יפים על ״הזדמנות שניה״ ועל כך ש”לעולם לא מאוחר מדי”, ובכל זאת, האם זה נכון?פסח שני פונה לאנשים שהחמיצו את פסח ראשון. כשהגיע הזמן להביא את קורבן הפסח, הם לא היו זמינים. הם … Continue reading

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Hand in Hand, and more with Emor

Shul can be a very relaxing, even soporific experience and so it happened, once upon a time, that Joe-Shmo was a little sleepy during the Torah reading. He woke up just to hear the reader chant the words: “And you … Continue reading

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Love and Boundaries – Kedoshim

We tend to think of “love your neighbor as yourself” as a Biblical commandment that “makes sense”, while, for example, that of “sha’atnez”, the prohibition to mix wool and linen in the same garment, as a “chok”, a law which … Continue reading

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אך נזכור את כולם – We Remember. Yom Hazikaron.

As kids we were taught early on to give up our seat on public bus for an older person, and my mom told us to do just that. But, as the story goes, my brother, about four or five years … Continue reading

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Achrei Mot Janusz Korczak – something for the Shabbat after Holocaust Memorial Day

When my students “stretch my limits”, I think of Janusz Korczak (pronounced – Yanush Kor’chak). Up until I was in my teens or so, Korczak was just a small street, not too far from my home in the Haifa neighborhood … Continue reading

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