Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Yom Kippur, the pinnacle of the Days of Awe, displays a quantum-like quality of reconciling two distinct but crucial modes of being. Atonement – the public need to make good for collectively falling short, for communal manifestations of greed, wrongdoing, impiety – jostles with the need for Repentance – the individual’s return from having veered off the narrow path of righteousness. At its earliest layer, the Biblical Yom Kippur is a day of atonement – a day when the entire people of Israel come together to cleanse the Temple sanctuary of the residue of a year’s worth of sin. Read more...

Knowing that his own life's journey will end before the people enter the land of Israel, in this week's double Torah portion of Nitsavim- Vayelekh Moses' gathers the people for one final address. He tells them: …If you return to God, and listen to God's voice, doing everything that I Moses am commanding you today… God will be waiting in love to help you with the return, he will show compassion, he will help you to re-settle in a Godly world, he will bring you to the land of Israel which you will inhabit. (based on Deuteronomy 30:1-10) Read more...

As part of a month long effort leading up to Yom Kippur, Rabbi Feinstein asks Ayekah – Where are You? In this special edition, Rabbi Ed Feinstein shares these important words about sharing letters with each other, with our families, our communities, our past and our future. To watch and listen, click below: Read more...

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from a philosophy department that espoused analytic philosophy, which focuses on the meaning of words. I am therefore probably the last person you know who would tell you to ignore the words of Yom Kippur – the words of the liturgy and the words spoken in sermons during the day. Read more...

This summer, my wife and I traveled to Israel with our three children. I celebrated my birthday there in Tel Aviv. We awoke early completely jet lagged at 4am and we walked from the beach to 16 Rothschild Street, where Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared Israel’s Independence on May 14th, 1948. We sat in the same room as Ben-Gurion, and listened to a recording of the members of that meeting recite the Shehechiyanu prayer for an event so special, so unique, that it hadn’t occurred in two thousand years. Read more...