Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Hannukah, unlike many other Jewish holidays, is pretty much a one-pony show. There is no Seder, no required festive meal, and no forbidden activities (melakhot). Along with a handful of liturgical additions - the primary ritual of Hannukah is lighting the candles. Read more...

Upon his arrival at Paddan-Aram, having wrestled with the angel, pacified his brother, survived the trauma of his daughter's rape and his sons' revenge on the men of Shechem, and having built an altar to God at the ancestral home-base of Beit-El, Jacob receives a surprising message from God: God appeared again to Jacob on his arrival from Paddan-Aram, and God blessed him. God said to him, "You whose name is Jacob, you shall be called Jacob no more, but 'Israel' shall be your name." Thus God named him Israel. Read more...

One of the unfortunate consequences of our obsession with youth is that we tend to consign growth, learning and challenge to the earliest phases of the human life cycle. In our flawed understanding, childhood and youth are the only appropriate times for exploring either world or self, for asking searching questions, for rebelling and for establishing identity. The assumption that growth is only appropriate or common during youth is the equivalent to consigning most people to an early death, shelving them long before their time. Read more...

The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gemorrah sulfur and fire out of heaven. He annihilated those cities and the entire Plain, and all the inhabitants of the city and the vegetation from the ground ... Next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before the Lord, and, looking down towards Sodom and Gemorrah, he saw the smoke of the land rising like the smoke of a kiln (Genesis 19:24-27) Read more...

We have entered this week into what appears to be a “barren month” – Cheshvan - a month with no holidays or even a fast day for relief. But it can be perceived as a month pregnant with potential and promise if we approach it as demanding us to stand alone in our relationship with God – to stand in the world as descendents of Avraham and Sarah, true lovers of God. Read more...