I want to share something about the Parasha from R’ Nota Greenblatt, z”l, whose Yahrzeit is coming up this week, and then relate it to events this coming week.
R’ Nota has only one Sefer. It’s on the Chumash. One of the things he says in Shmini relates to an interesting question. He was asked by someone about a strange thing that the Torah does in this week’s...Read more...
Some background: There are two types of Midrash. There is the Midrash -- more familiar to everyone -- with sometimes creative stories which highlight aspects of the narrative of the Torah. But there is a second kind of Midrash, in which we learn Halachot out of the verses of the Torah. It reads much like certain technical sections of the Talmud, and even overlaps with it, as they both derive Halachot from verses of...Read more...
There might be many reasons why this day would feel extra. But there’s a real reason why it seems extra, and that is because nothing anticipated it. In contrast, what happened in Egypt to the Jews was foretold. It did not have to take place in Egypt but Avraham Avinu was told that there would be servitude and that there would be affliction. All of those things were going to happen. Once they were...Read more...
Mah Nishtana HaShana Hazot? This is not a year like all of the others. But it’s not as though we’ve never seen it. This configuration of the calendar happens roughly 11% of the time, but in the last 31 years, it’s happened six times. It occurred only once in the 80s and once in the 90s. But they can come in clusters, and there can be a long gap. The gap after this year is 20...Read more...
