Category: Parasha
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Bo 5779: “With Our Children We Shall Go Forth”
I recently completed two cross-country drives with our children. We spent almost one week of their winter vacation with family on the east coast but “vacation” is really not the word that springs to mind when contemplating travel…
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Shemot 5779: “The Israelite People are Too Numerous”
The first verses of Parashat Shemot compress decades of history, which must have been rich with nuanced and complicated politics and multi-facetted heroes and villains, into just a few verses. The Torah, at times, packs some…
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VaYeshev 5779: “Profiles in Cowardice”
Almost one month ago, Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein, one of the rashei yeshiva at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel told the following story during a sichah, an address that he delivered in the beit midrash to the entire…
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VaYishlach 5779: “Striving and Prevailing”
“In the Beginning God created Heaven and Earth – the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be…
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Toldot 5779: “Exiled Among Nations”
At this time tomorrow, in 24 hours and fifteen minutes it will be the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, one hundred years to the minute that the First World War came to…
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Vayera 5779: “This Was the Sin of Your Sister Sodom”
When Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev was appointed the rabbi of Berditchev, he sat down with the communal leaders to work out the terms by which they would guide the community. The communal leaders, wishing to protect their…
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Lekh Lekha 5779: “What’s in a Name?”
On Thursday afternoon a delegation of DePaul University undergraduates came to visit the shul. They are brought here each year by their professor as a field trip for a course they are taking on Chicago’s Jewish community. They…
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Bereishit 5779: “Nothing but Evil All the Time”
The Torah is not a book of theology written by people. It is a book of anthropology written by God. The Torah is likewise not a book of philosophy and is not a book of history…
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Shabbat Hol HaMoed Sukkot 5779: “A Wicked One Endures Despite His Wickedness”
Hearing the book of Kohelet read can be a dark and sobering experience. It describes a world without justice and a world without protection and a world without meaning. Two phenomena in particular bother the author of Kohelet…
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Ha’Azinu 5779: “Synesthesia”
Here we are again. It can be exhausting to jump into Shabbat and then Yom Tov so soon after the intensity of the yamim ha’nora’im but for all of that exhaustion, I believe that there is something…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 