Friday, March 29th 2024   |

Commentaries

Person in the Parsha: Bechukotai

By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB

“THE WALKING TOUR”

I am the type of person who has always believed that the only way to learn about something important is to buy a book about it. For example, it has been my good fortune to have traveled widely in my life and to have visited many interesting cities. Invariably, I bought guidebooks before each such visit, with detailed itineraries...

Off the Pulpit: Not Good Enough?

By RABBI DAVID WOLPE

Torah heroes generally shrink from leadership. Moses pleads with God to send someone else. Isaiah fears that he has ‘unclean lips.’ Jeremiah must be forced by God to be a prophet. In an almost satiric version, Samuel three times thinks God’s voice is really the voice of Eli, the High Priest, calling him in the night.

None of these great figures is falsely modest. Rather they...

Person in the Parsha: Behar

By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB

“THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE“

It is a lesson I first learned in a course I took on the skills of interviewing long ago. The instructor taught us that the way to really size up a candidate for a job is to determine how he uses his time. He taught us that one question designed to assist the interviewer to...

Person in the Parsha: Behar

By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB 

“THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE“

It is a lesson I first learned in a course I took on the skills of interviewing long ago. The instructor taught us that the way to really size up a candidate for a job is to determine how he uses his time. He taught us that one question designed to assist the interviewer to make that...

Off the Pulpit: What is holiness?

By RABBI DAVID WOLPE

The Hebrew word for holiness is kadosh, which also means separate. In some sense the realm of the holy is the realm set apart – the Sabbath that is kadosh from the week, or the couple bound in kiddushin, the rites of marriage, sharing a unique intimacy.

Yet holiness cannot be fully separate. For we are told God is kadosh and God is both above all...

Person in the Parsha: Emor

By RABBI JOSEPH H. PROUSER

A LIFE OR SANCTIFICATION

The conditions under which we live are many and varied. Some of us live in very comfortable, even idyllic, surroundings. Others struggle with diverse hardships, including poverty, disease, and the conditions of war. Our people have known unspeakably extreme conditions, such as those experienced during the Holocaust.

Throughout history, we have learned to obey God’s commands, no...

Off the Pulpit: The right to be enchanted

By RABBI DAVID WOLPE

A sharp statement that I believe was made by the children’s writer Joan Aiken: “Anyone who does not read to their children doesn’t deserve to have them.”

She may be overstating the point, but not by much. One of the most beautiful and binding experience one can have with a child is to read to her or to him, especially at bedtime. It is a sacred moment,...

Person in the Parsha: Kedoshim

By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB

I GET NO RESPECT!

I love visiting residences for senior citizens. For one thing, being around truly older people invariably helps me feel young by comparison.

Recently, I was a weekend guest scholar at such a residence. I dispensed with my prepared lectures and instead tried to engage the residents of the facility, not one of whom was less than ninety...

Person in the Parsha: Achrei Mot

By RABBI TZVI HERSH WEINREB

NO EXIT

There is much that the Torah leaves to our imagination. Regular students of the weekly Torah portion soon become convinced that the narratives they read each week are deliberately abbreviated, as if to encourage us to fill in the missing links on our own.

One outstanding example of such an incomplete narrative is the story of the death of Nadab and...

Off the Pulpit: When the Messiah comes

Elijah is the prophet who will announce the coming of the Messiah in Jewish teaching.

In the Bible, Elijah does not die – he is carried off to heaven in a chariot – and so the tradition expected his return. We anticipate Elijah’s arrival most eagerly at certain times: at the end of Shabbat, the end of Yom Kippur, at a brit milah and at the Passover Seder.

Although there...