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Parashat HaShavua

  • Parashat Ki Tisa -The Wonder of and Need for Authentic Halacha

    In Parashat HaShavua

    …This feeling of wonderment is the source and inexhaustible fountain-head of his desire for knowledge. It drives the child irresistibly on to solve the mystery, and if in his attempt he encounters a causal relationship, he will not tire of repeating the same experiment ten times, a hundred times, in order to taste the thrill of discovery over and over again….The reason why the adult no longer wonders is not because he has solved the riddle of life, but because he has grown accustomed to the laws governing his world picture. But the problem of why these particular laws and no others hold remains for him just as amazing and inexplicable as for the child. He who does not comprehend this situation misconstrues its profound significance, and he who has reached the stage where he no longer wonders about anything, merely demonstrates that he has lost the art of reflective reasoning.

     

    [Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography, NY, 1949, pp 91-93]

     

    In this week's parasha we find a fascinating passage concerning Moshe's descent from Sinai. We are informed that Moshe decided to cover his face with a mask after realizing that his facial skin had become radiant causing people to withdraw and not dare approach him (Shemot 34: 29-35).

     

  • Tetzaveh – The Trivialities of the Tabernacle

    In Parashat HaShavua and Parashat Tetzaveh

    Judaism is the theology of the physical, the commonplace and the mundane. It is concerned with the everydayness of our lives and struggles, with the devastating effect brought on by the curse of the multitude of trivialities that often keep us busy from morning till night. It struggles with the emptiness of our lives when we do not even have the time to focus on the higher meaning of our existence. Man's paradox is that he is too much at home in this world yet needs to escape his worldliness in order to be consciously part of the universe.

  • Human Autonomy and Divine Commandment – Part 1

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy and Parashat HaShavua

    One of the most discussed issues in today's world of religious thought is the question of human autonomy versus man's obligation to carry out God's command. Which is the higher religious value: to serve God in a spontaneous outpouring of religious devotion (autonomy), or to obey the divine imperative (obedience)?

  • Parashat Chayei Sarah – Leadership and Captainship

    In Parashat HaShavua

    Avraham passed away and died at a good age, elderly and full of days and he was gathered to his people. (Bereshith 25:8) The day that Avraham our father departed from the world, the great men of the nations stood in line and said: Woe to a world that has lost its leader, and woe to a ship that has lost its captain.(Baba Batra 91a)

  • What makes a Legal Case a “Major” one?

    In Parashat HaShavua and Parashat Yitro

    What makes a legal case truly “major”? Is it the amount of money at stake — or the depth of moral and legal complexity it demands? In Parashat Yitro we see a subtle but radical change that Moshe makes to Yitro’s judicial reforms, revealing a vision of justice in which complexity, not power or wealth, determines what truly matters.

  • Parashat Vayera – The Struggle for Faith – Part II

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy and Parashat HaShavua

    It is most important to realize that in biblical days and even in the days of the Mishna and the Talmud, hardly anybody doubted the existence of God. That He exists was beyond doubt. It is for this reason that we do not find any discussion in the Tenach, Mishna or Talmud about God's existence. It is only in the Middle ages that Jewish philosophers started to debate this matter.

  • The Sanctification and Importance of Time

    In Parashat HaShavua

    "This is the burnt offering of the shabbath on its shabbath"
    (Bamidbar 28:10)With this verse the Torah commands us to bring a special sacrifice on shabbath in the Temple. Rashi inquiries into the reason why there is a need to state that this shabbath offering needs to be brought on shabbath. If it is a shabbath offering then it is implicit that it needs to be sacrificed on shabbath!

  • The Successful Failure

    In Parashat HaShavua

    Throughout history some of the greatest people often failed time after time before they really made it to the top. Others thought that they had failed but realized at a later stage in life that what they believed to be failure was in fact a grand success. Still others never succeeded in the conventional sense of the word, but became the hallmark of marvelous accomplishments, sometimes, without ever being aware of it.

  • Efron and Arafat- Two of a kind

    In Parashat HaShavua

    In trying to obtain a piece of land to bury Sara, Avraham gets heavily involved in lengthy negotiations (Bereshith, chapter 23). After he has turned to the children of Chet, he asks them to speak to Efron the son of Tzohar who is the owner of the Cave of Machpela. It is in this cave that he would like to bury his dear wife Sara.

  • Revolution through one word

    In Parashat HaShavua

    When studying the life of Avraham, we often wonder what made him into the first Jew in all of history. Without any doubt he must be seen as the progenitor of all that Judaism had to offer throughout the ages. As such he laid the foundations of nearly all religious thinking in the west. Not only did Judaism give birth to two other world religions, Christianity and Islam, but it also became the foundation of several legal systems, the concept of justice and western morality. What was Avraham's secret?

  • The Blessings of Ephraim and Menashe

    In Parashat HaShavua

    "Man always dies before he is fully born." Erich Fromm
    The certainty that one has succeeded in the education of one's children can only be established when one watches the conduct of one's grandchildren. And even then one cannot be sure.

  • Mixing with this World

    In Jewish Thought and Philosophy and Parashat HaShavua

    In one of its unusual passages, the Talmud (Eruvin, 21b) reports that King Salomon instituted the laws concerning the Eruv, i.e. "mixing of the realms" through which one is allowed to carry objects otherwise forbidden on Shabbath from one domain to another, private and public. At another occasion King Salomon instituted the ritual washing of the hands. Both decrees were received with divine favor and a heavenly voice issued and proclaimed: "My son, if your heart is wise, Mine will be glad, even Mine…" (see Mishleh 23. 15)