Category: Parasha
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Balak 5777: “Integrity & Blessing”
The great Shakespearian scholar, Stephen Greenblatt enrolled in Yale University in 1961. The grandson of East European Jewish immigrants he was immediately aware that Yale was a community built by people very much unlike himself and for people…
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Hukkat 5777: “Universal Human Rights and Particular Jewish Goods”
There is a kind of magical thinking that emerges twice in our Torah portion and understanding the role and place of the magical, the paradoxical and inexplicable in the Torah, can help us correctly diagnose and evaluate some…
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Shlach 5777: “Jewish Unity without Chauvinism”
One of the most common pieces of advice one receives after bringing home a newborn infant is “sleep when the baby sleeps.” Somewhat less common advice is “write a drasha when the baby sleeps.” I understand why that…
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Emor 5777: “National Crouton Day, Mother’s Day, & Lag BaOmer”
I want to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a happy National Crouton Day. Today is also National Fruit Cocktail Day. One observes National Fruit Cocktail Day by eating a canned…
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Shmini 5777: “A Unified Theory of Halakhah”
I truly love being asked to provide halakhic guidance. It’s literally what I went to school to learn how to do – which is more than I can say about some of the other questions that…
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Vayakhel-Pekudei 5777: “Shattered Tablets”
Those of you who sat through the Torah reading this morning may have been wondering, “is this the longest Torah portion or the longest double-portion that occurs each year?” The answer is that Vayakhel Pekudei is…
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Ki Tissa 5777: “The Velveteen Rabbit and the Golden Calf”
In one of the first pages of his first published collection of teshuvot, halakhic responsa, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein describes and offers a judgment concerning a terrible dilemma. A Jewish man had contracted a highly contagious disease, perhaps tuberculosis,…
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Terumah 5777: “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”
Less than two weeks ago Jehan Jabar, an elementary school teacher in Tayibeh, an Arab city in central Israel, (not to be confused with Taybeh – in the West Bank where the brewery is), recorded a video…
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Beshalach 5777: “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”
In September of 1967 Pete Seeger appeared on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to sing a song he had just written called Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. The song tells of an army platoon fording…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 