Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

With today's Torah portion, Aharei Mot, we begin one of the distinct law collections of the Torah -- the Holiness Code.  This progression of chapters in the Book of Leviticus (Chapters 17-26) explain how the members of the Jewish People are to attain a level of holiness and integrity which will allow us to reach our maximum potential as a covenanted people and as individuals in the service of God.   Read more...

The Case of the Derogatory SnapChat Two weeks ago, I had the great privilege to be a dayan, a judge, for a "moot beit din" competition sponsored by Ravsak, the association of North American Jewish day schools. High school students from across the US and Canada, and from across the spectrum of Jewish life and denominations, gathered together in Los Angeles to debate and interpret how Jewish law applies to the following case (somewhat abbreviated here in my paraphrase): Read more...

Eating is something we do, three, four, five times each day. Some of us are aficionados of three square meals, the meat-and-potatoes crowd. There aren’t as many as there used to be, perhaps due to their cholesterol levels, but that staple crowd is still to be found. And then there are the grazers, munching all day on a variety of green things that resemble nothing quite so much as the weeds we try to keep out of our lawns. They may live a long time, but where’s the beef?   Read more...

Each year, we gather around our tables, surrounded by friends and family, to recount the tale of our ancestors' miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery.  As we unpack our Haggadot and look to the classical words of the rabbis and sages of old, it is worth stopping for a moment to examine the very first passage of the Seder ritual. Read more...

Throughout antiquity, most people assumed that illness was a punishment from the gods. Incensed at some infraction of ritual law, pagan gods were forever visiting terrible diseases, sometimes to the point of death, on their worshipers.   In fact, this tendency to attribute divine disfavor to any manifestation of sickness runs rampant in our society as well (although only for the illness of someone else!).   Read more...