Last week’s Parasha and this morning’s are twins. One leads up to the giving of the law with the drama at the bottom of the mountain in the days before. And this week’s Parasha begins with the giving of the law and then ends with the drama at the bottom of the mountain in the days before and after the Torah is given. They form a chiasmus of A-B-B-A.
Despite all of the coincidences that occurred last week, everything that brought together the most musical Shabbat in EB history, there was one thing missing: Only this week is called Shabbat Shira. I don’t know how we messed that up.
But I thought that after a week we can reflect and say something about the nature of Shira.
I feel like the one who interrupts the entertainment portion of the flight to give an announcement from the crew in the cockpit. While we are in this intermission, let me thank R’ Dov Dukhovny for proposing this weekend, divided between EB and the Shalem School. He is the small “a” author of this weekend. Of course, not even he could imagine that it would work out that our Chazan Zevi Muller would have...Read more...
The Parasha -- the whole book -- is called Shemot. That seems like it refers to the names in the beginning, and it does. The book of Shemot is about the second step in the story, redemption. Bereisheet sets the stage and then Shemot fulfills the destiny of the story. The names of the children of Yaakov as they pass away in the first verses here seem to be connected to the first story. So why are they...Read more...
