Our Exile, Hashem’s Pain
Last week, over 1000 guests gathered to celebrate the wedding of Eliya Cohen and Ziv Aboud. Former Chief Rabbi Rav David Lau officiated. What made the wedding so special was that Cohen had spent over 500 days in Hamas captivity, while Aboud survived the massacre at...
No One Left To Flounder
At the end of this week's reading, the Torah prescribes an unusual procedure if a dead person is found out of town. They measure to determine which neighboring city or town is the closest to the corpse. The elders of that town bring a heifer, a calf which has never...
A Lifetime of Choices
Our reading begins this week with a passage demanding explanation: See that I place before you this day [both] blessing and curse. The Blessing, if you will listen to the Commandments of Hashem your God which I command to you this day. And the Curse, if you do not...
Remembering our Forebears
In this week's reading, the first verse says that because we listen to the Torah and follow it, “Hashem your G-d will guard the Covenant and the kindness which He swore to your fathers" [7:12]. And in the next verse, it speaks of the blessings which Hashem will give...
Learning from Our Mistakes
The entirety of Sefer Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, was taught during the last weeks of Moshe’s life. This parsha, Devarim, is always read on the Shabbos prior to the 9th of Av. The 9th of Av is the day that both Holy Temples were destroyed. It is also the day...
Valuing the Land
In Parshas Mattos, read this week, the tribes of Reuven and Gad ask, due to their large flocks and the fertile ground east of the Jordan river, if they could settle there rather than within the Land of Israel itself. They said that they would build "enclosures for our...
