Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

Here's something that is probably impossible to fathom and even a little hard to swallow. Imagine working for a non-profit and making a desperate pitch for funds to build your organization or to keep it afloat. The money and materials start coming in ... and do not stop. At a certain point you simply cannot handle the intake and realize you could never use it all. What do you do? Tell people to stop, right? Wait, really? Would you do that? Read more...

There are certain people we meet whose talents and gifts defy explanation, are even mind boggling, leaving us overwhelmed, moved, and speechless! The singer whose ability to reach perfect pitch every time stirs a chord; the writer whose words tell the story exactly as it should be imagined — every single time; the artist whose images paint a story of meaning and emotion; the speaker who knows just what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. Read more...

"Remember what Amalek did to you... Therefore... you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. Do not forget!" (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) These words, read as the Maftir portion of the Torah reading, and the accompanying Haftarah, which tells the story of Saul’s battle against the Amalekites, ring true to us when we consider the many times in which Jews have been attacked, maimed, and killed by others, most especially the Holocaust. There is a piece of every Jew who knows anything about these events that says, "Never again!" — and rightly so. Read more...

My son recently celebrated his eighth birthday, and I spent the few days prior to his party baking the birthday cake. On Friday, I bought ingredients and on Saturday night I baked a rectangular cake as well as a circular one. On Sunday, I decorated the cake. First, I made white, red and black frosting. I then shaped the rectangular cake into a bowling pin and frosted it accordingly — even adding a red liquorish for the stripes of the pin and black liquorish for the bottom. I frosted and decorated the circular cake as a bowling ball to accompany the pin. Read more...

Among those who left Egypt, there were two of my ancestors - call them Berel and Shmerel. As slaves, these two had grown so accustomed to looking down at the ground they could no longer lift their eyes. And so when Moses brought Israel across the Red Sea, Berel asked Shmerel, "What do you see?" "I see mud," he responded. "I see mud too. What's all this about freedom? We had mud in Egypt, we have mud here!" Read more...