Category: Parasha
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Mishpatim 5779: “Peshat, Halakhah, and Torah Study”
Spring is here…well, not quite, but it’s nice to have *only* seasonly frigid weather instead of unseasonably frigid weather. There were some moments this past week that I was quite proud of and wanted to share…
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Yitro 5779: “Law and Narrative”
I asked you earlier to count during the asseret ha-dibrot, the so-called Ten Commandments, and to pay attention to how many commandments there are in the ten commandments. Does anyone have an answer? The answer is subject…
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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…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 