Category: Year
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Vayehi 5785: Truth Telling
Many years ago when we only had one child and he was only six months old a wise mentor said to me, “it’s such a special age when they are too young for you to be…
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Vayigash 5785: Short & Bitter After the End of History
Avraham was the first individual whom the Torah describes as being elderly וְאַבְרָהָ֣ם זָקֵ֔ן בָּ֖א בַּיָּמִ֑ים but Yaakov was the first old Jewish man. Of course not every Jewish man who ages becomes an old Jewish…
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Vayishlach 5785: Leading from Behind
In 2019 the shul where I worked was firebombed by an incompetent assailant who managed to cause no damage whatsoever and whose early-morning attack would have gone altogether undetected if the custodian hadn’t noticed some broken…
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Toldot 5785: Contranyms
Contranyms, sometimes called “Janus words” are words that mean the same as their opposite – like the figure Janus in Greek mythology who had two faces that looked in opposite directions. To bolt is to secure…
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Lekh Lekha 5785: “The Age of Chaos, the Age of Torah, the Age of Mashiach”
“The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.” This famous observation of Hegel, the great philosopher of history, reminds us that clarity is only possible when the sun sets and we can look back at what…
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Yom Kippur 5785: Yizkor
A seven year old girl, who attends a shul with her family where a friend of mine is the rabbi, recently learned in school about the custom of eating challah with honey starting on Rosh Hashanah…
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Rosh Hashanah 2 5785: “Heroic Potential”
One of the saddest experiences I have had over the course of a very sad year was listening to the livestream broadcast of Rachel Goldberg Polin speaking at the funeral of her son Hersh, just days…
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Rosh Hashanah 1 5785: “The Palace is in Flames”
Once upon a time a traveler set forth on a journey into an unknown land. After many weeks of travel he saw a light in the distance and upon getting closer he saw a birah doleket,…
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Ki Teitzei 5784: Commemoration and Interpretation
Last Wednesday night I taught a shiur in Denver on behalf of the Wexner Heritage Fellowship. The students, all with leadership roles in the Colorado Jewish community, have already spent months learning together and traveling together…
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Devarim 5784: “No Words”
No Words אין מילים There are no words. In Hebrew as in English, the phrase signals our awareness that we are confronted by a circumstance that confounds are ability to understand using our usual conventional words.…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 