Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

In 1939, a group of Hasidic Jews in Lublin, Poland were lined up against a barbed wire fence by SS soldiers. The sadistic commandant then ordered them to sing themselves to their own deaths. One of the men began to improvise a tune: “Mir veln zey iberlebn, iberlebn, iberlebn” – “We will outlive them” he sang over and over. Witness reports say that the song spread quickly through the group, who died dancing and singing those words. Read more...

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“The priest shall then offer the purification offering and make expiation for the one being purified of his impurity…Then he shall be pure.”  (Leviticus 14:19-20) Read more...

We like to think of childbirth as miraculous and joyful (which we certainly hope it will be), but it is also a bloody, painful, and sometimes dangerous process. Even today, after the advent of modern medicine, women continue to face perilous complications and even the risk of death during pregnancy and labor. It is thus not surprising, at least to me, that in the biblical world – as we see in Chap. 12 of Leviticus, the opening of this week’s parashah, Tazriah – that giving birth was a source Read more...

Judaism is a religion of faith. It is also a religion of behavior – and not just in contemporary times, but in ancient days and everlasting. In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, the Torah says: “And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: Drink no wine or other intoxicants, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die. This is a law for all time throughout the ages, for you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which the Read more...