Category: Ma’asei
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Matot-Ma’asei 5783: “Finding Equilibrium”
One of the techniques used by television writers to build excitement as a TV series reaches its grand finale is to bring back characters from earlier episodes for cameo appearances in the final episode. This resolves…
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Matot Ma’asei 5782: “A Journey of Forty Years Begins with a First Step”
One of the strangest moments of dissonance that exists in our prayer life occurs very frequently on Friday night when we sing along cheerfully, melodiously, in harmony to the words of Psalm 95: אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה אָקוּט…
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Matot-Ma’asai 5781: “Lovingly Counted”
Last week, a day or two before Shabbat I watched a television interview with Colonel Golan Vach, one of the commanders of the Israeli rescue and recovery mission in Surfside Florida. The interviewer for CNN asked…
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Matot-Ma’asei 5779: “This is What Your Fathers Did”
Just a few weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon, Sara and I walked with our children to shul just before our first Shabbat together in Yerushalayim. In the late afternoon on Fridays in Yerushalayim, almost everyone…
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Matot Ma’asei 5777: “Summertime”
This has been a hard summer for Lovers of Zion. At the beginning of the summer, right here in Chicago, at an event associated with the gay-pride weekend, a flag decorated with a Jewish star was maligned…
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Matot-Ma’asei 5776: “Patriarchy and Progress”
I received a package in the mail this week which filled with terror when I opened it and saw what was inside. I opened the large white envelope and out…slipped…the Ezras Torah Luach for 5777 which begins…
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Matot-Ma’asei 5775: “Journeys and Destinations”
All of us advanced students who learned in the kollel at Yeshivat Hamivtar adjacent to Efrat had to take turns performing shemirah – nighttime guard duty. And so, after an afternoon at an army base where…
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Ma’asei 5774: “Reflections from Uganda”
I. The Uganda Plan is one of the most derided episodes in the history of Zionism. Stymied in his initial attempts to receive international backing for a Jewish national home in Palestine, Theodor Herzl pushed instead for…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 