Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Have you ever had the experience of talking to someone and in the middle of the conversation, you wonder if the other person really understands anything you are saying? Or worse yet, really cares about you or what you are saying? So often, people talk to each other; but sometimes, we don't listen. We can be distracted, half-listening, and half-thinking about something else. Rather than paying attention, we focus on how we can respond. We can be so busy formulating a response to what is being said that we miss the real message that is being sent. Read more...

It is 10 AM on Tuesday morning, November 4th. As I sit and craft these words, the citizens of the United States are engaged in a great miracle. Today, as they do every four years, they will re-establish a new nation, one in which the People - not government, not military, not wealth, but the people - are sovereign. Today, as is true every four years, the American people reconsider their collective vision of who we are as a nation, what our agenda is to be into the future. Read more...

There is a tradition to read strands of the names of the Torah portions as a message in and of themselves. A particularly famous one is used when praising someone extensively after their death (so extensively to the point that you wonder what would have been said about them in their lifetime). "Acharei Mot K'doshim Emor". Three Torah portions from Vayikra (Leviticus) that if read as a sentence state: 'after they are dead you say they are holy.' Read more...

"Breisheet barah Adonai et hashamayim v'et ha-aretz - In the beginning, God created heaven and earth..." Read more...

One day while the grandchildren of the Rhizner rebbe, Rabbi Yisrael Friedman (d. 1858) were playing marbles, a controversy erupted between the five and seven year old, as to the difference between a Tzadik ( a righteous master), a Tzaddik Hador (a Tzadik of the generation), and a Tzadik Yesod Olam (a Tzadik that is the foundation of the world). Read more...