Recent Weekly Torah
Healing the Sick with a Visit
Recently, I sat with someone who had just come out of a bout with serious illness. After the weeks and months of hospitalization, bed rest, medical therapy, my companion said to me: "Rabbi, all my life, I have been hesitant to visit people in the hospital or in their recovery. And, now after enduring my own health challenges, I now understand how misguided I have been. Because you see, Rabbi, I watched as my friends and even some of my family became me - how they hesitated and avoided visiting me in the hospital, or even at home."
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Z'chut Imahot
The first verse of the parashah, Gen. 23:1, tells us (following the translation in Etz Hayim): "Sarah's lifetime - the span of Sarah's life - came to one hundred and twenty-seven years." There is a rather strange little midrash that appears in Bereshit Rabbah regarding Sarah's death, and more particularly her advanced age the time of her death:
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Would You Recommend This Book to Your Friends?
I love Jewish books. I attribute this to my fourth grade Hebrew School teacher who regularly banished me to the synagogue library. I wasn't a bad kid. But after a full day of "regular school," Hebrew School provided the ideal environment to meet and mix. So after being scolded three times: "Sheket, Yitzchak, Sheket!" I would find myself in the synagogue library...where I learned to love Jewish books.
Once, the teacher caught me on the way out the door.
"Yitzhak, go to the Library!" she shouted, "But I want you to do something there...write a book report."
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Sweet and Sour
I am totally out of sync.
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What's in It?
In the coming days, we read both the end and the beginning. On Simhat Torah (which is combined with Shmini Atzeret for those in Israel, where only one day of hag is celebrated), we hear the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, also known as Parashat V'zot haberacha, followed by Chapter 1 and the first 3 verses of Chapter 2 of Genesis. On the next day (at least here in the diaspora), the weekly parashah is Bereshit, as we begin once again the yearly cycle of Torah readings.
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