Category: Parasha
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Ki Tavo 5786: My Father and Mother Have Abandoned Me
At the 1991 Grammy Awards Bob Dylan received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Jack Nicholson handed an award to Dylan who then made a cryptic statement (and I won’t try in any way to imitate Bob Dylan’s…
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Ki Teitzei 5786: The Bridge of Life
I spent six years of my life as a full-time yeshiva student and one major focus, of at least the first years, was acquiring the textual fluency and Hebrew literacy to open the Jewish bookshelf. I…
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Re’eh 5786: Corpus Separatum
I spent three weeks in Jerusalem this summer, but before that I was in Paris for seven days so of course my most extensive conversations in Hebrew took place in Paris where I explained where I…
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Ekev 5786: When You Lie Down and When You Rise
I’m sure I’ve shared the complaint with you before that one of the major occupational hazards of my profession is that I so rarely have the opportunity to listen to great derashot or divrei torah. One…
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Va’Ethanan 5786: Provide Comfort to My People?
Shabbat Shalom. It is wonderful to be back with you all this Shabbat. I am filled with gratitude for everyone who stepped up, in big ways and small ways, to sustain the shul during my absence.…
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Korach 5786: Arguments Worth Having
In the 1950s my teacher Rabbi Yehudah Amital was a faculty member at a yeshiva in Rehovot where he worked alongside his cousin-by-marriage Rabbi Elazer Menachem Schach. The two teachers argued incessantly about all the hot…
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Baha’alotcha 5786: Purity & Solidarity
There is a phrase, made popular on the Internet but used often enough in conversation too, to describe someone who fails at what is ostensibly a simple task: You had one job. Several memorable examples come…
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Naso 5786: Circles of Blessing
Circles of Blessing Every community contains conflict. Whenever people gather, and try to live together, there will be differences of opinion and personalities that clash. I once lived in a community with a kohen who had…
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Behar Behukotai 5786: Fractal Sanctity
Fractals are geometric shapes, which can appear in nature, or can be generated by computer graphics, in which a self-repeating pattern can be seen at any scale of magnification. A snail’s spiral, the coil of an…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 