Category: Parasha
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Vaera 5777: “Promises to Keep”
As the curtain opens on Act II Scene 1 of the exodus from Egypt we find Moshe at what is perhaps the lowest point in his career. He had accepted a mission from God to free his…
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Shemot 5777: “And a New King Arose”
In 1812 and 1813 Napoleon’s armies marched into Russia, capturing Moscow, before retreating to France, defeated by the Russian winter and the tenacious opposition of the Russian people. Napoleon’s campaign into Russia was a turning point in…
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VaYigash 5777: “The Winter’s Tale”
How do you recreate a relationship after a decade of forced separation? Shakespeare explored this question in The Winter’s Tale when King Leontes is reunited with his daughter, Perdita after the passage of sixteen years. The play ends…
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Miketz 5777: “Hasidic Tales of Jewish Psychoanalysts”
There is a book that I’d like to write one day. It will be called “Hasidic Tales of Jewish Psychoanalysts” and the first story would be the account of Freud’s analysis of the second Lubavitcher Rebbe.…
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VaYeshev 5777: “How to Win an Argument”
There were once two close friends who only loved one thing more than their friendship and that was baseball. As they aged they become fixated on the question of whether or not there was baseball in Heaven.…
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VaYishlach 5777: “Like Father Like Son”
How do we know that Jacob wore a kipah? Well, at the beginning of last week’s parasha, the Torah says: וַיֵצֵ֥א יַעֲק֖ב מִבְאֵ֣ר שָ֑בַע “And Yakov went out from Be’er Sheva” Could it be that Yaakov…
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VaYetzei 5777: “Barbarians!”
“Over thousands of years, they wandered from their homeland in the Middle East to Europe and finally traveled to North America, bound by a shared history and rigid dietary restrictions. But these nomads do not keep kosher. They…
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Toldot 5777: “He Hunted With His Mouth”
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Vice President Hubert Humphrey made a campaign stop to Brooklyn to visit Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the leader of the Satmar Hasidic court, known simply as the “Satmar Rav.” During the meeting,…
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Noach 5777: “A Window for the Ark”
Earlier this week I witnessed several heated disagreements on social media that were each about the very same controversial topic. Each conversation began with someone whom I know presenting his opinion on this particular controversial and sensitive…
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Ha’Azinu 5777: “Don’t Let the Light Go Out”
Before I speak I thought I’d share a story. It happened here in shul, just last night. As we often do, we had a group of college students visiting as part of their study of religious…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 