Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

"Surely, this Instruction that I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach" (Deuteronomy 31:11).  Why could the Torah be sure that it is not too baffling for us or beyond reach our reach? Read more...

Since the high holidays and Sukkot will be upon us soon, let’s talk this week about springtime holidays… No, really – as you’ll see in a moment I’m actually quite serious about this. Read more...

This week’s Torah reading records that before going out to battle, the Israelite troops would gather together to hear from their leaders. The generals would give the orders, and then a priest would step forward and bless the assembled soldiers. He would say to them: “Hear, O Israel! You are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your heart falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them. For it is the Adonai your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory” (Deuteronomy 20:3-4). Read more...

Read more...

A central theme of Parashat Eikev is contingency: that a person’s fate is predicated on their actions, and the future is not yet written. A core problem occupying medieval philosophers, including the classical Torah commentators, the question of causality continues to fascinate—and elude—us today. In our own time, it tends to be scientists who explore the way that cause and effect play out in time. Physicists debate the linearity of time, with some advancing the block universe theory in which causality is an illusion created by human cognitive processes. Read more...