Category: Year
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Shemini Atzeret 5787: It’s Hard to Separate
As you know, or will soon find out, at its core Yizkor is a glorified pledge to tzedakah. We do this on Yom Tov because the Torah’s conception of celebrating a holiday includes making space at…
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YK 5787: Maximum Responsibility, Maximum Hope
Last week, just hours before Rosh Hashanah began in Israel, I received a frantic phone call from one of our children studying there in yeshiva this year. Hoping to save a bit of money, he had…
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RH2 5787: Atonement without Guilt
The comedian Emo Philips, once voted the author of the funniest religious joke of all time, shared the following joke which exposes an ironic facet of this season of repentance. For the record, this is not…
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RH1 5787: Just as I was Rewarded for Interpreting, So I am Rewarded for Refraining
Shimon HaAmsuni, a relatively obscure figure mentioned in the Talmud, is one of my Jewish heroes and I think that he should be your hero too. In the generations before Rabbi Akiva, Shimon HaAmsuni promulgated a…
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Ki Tavo 5786: My Father and Mother Have Abandoned Me
At the 1991 Grammy Awards Bob Dylan received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Jack Nicholson handed an award to Dylan who then made a cryptic statement (and I won’t try in any way to imitate Bob Dylan’s…
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Ki Teitzei 5786: The Bridge of Life
I spent six years of my life as a full-time yeshiva student and one major focus, of at least the first years, was acquiring the textual fluency and Hebrew literacy to open the Jewish bookshelf. I…
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Re’eh 5786: Corpus Separatum
I spent three weeks in Jerusalem this summer, but before that I was in Paris for seven days so of course my most extensive conversations in Hebrew took place in Paris where I explained where I…
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Ekev 5786: When You Lie Down and When You Rise
I’m sure I’ve shared the complaint with you before that one of the major occupational hazards of my profession is that I so rarely have the opportunity to listen to great derashot or divrei torah. One…
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Va’Ethanan 5786: Provide Comfort to My People?
Shabbat Shalom. It is wonderful to be back with you all this Shabbat. I am filled with gratitude for everyone who stepped up, in big ways and small ways, to sustain the shul during my absence.…
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Korach 5786: Arguments Worth Having
In the 1950s my teacher Rabbi Yehudah Amital was a faculty member at a yeshiva in Rehovot where he worked alongside his cousin-by-marriage Rabbi Elazer Menachem Schach. The two teachers argued incessantly about all the hot…
