Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

“And God spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Command your brother and his sons regarding the Torah of the offerings.” (Leviticus 6:1-2) Mitzvah is one of the foundational words of Jewish life. Its root comes from the verb which is the name of this week’s parasha: Tzav, “command.” Despite its colloquial usage as “good deed,” mitzvah really means “commandment”—a holy edict, meant to give shape and substance to what it means to live as a member of the Jewish covenant.  Read more...

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“And when Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks – as the Lord had commanded, so they had done – Moses blessed them.”  (Exodus 39:43) Read more...

This derasha is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Deborah Labovitz, but you will have to read on if you want to know why. Read more...

Motl, the Cantor’s Son, was Sholem Aleichem’s last literary creation; the unfinished two-volume collection of stories about the character begins with his shtetl boyhood and tells the story of his coming to America. It is a symbolic journey depicting the changes experienced by a generation of Eastern European Jews, and by the author himself in later life. In order to represent the break with tradition that Motl encounters in New York City, Sholem Aleichem makes him an aspiring artist, a salient detail highlighted by Dan Miron, a preeminent scholar of modern Jewish literature. Read more...