The Parasha begins with a stark choice: I place before you blessing and curse. The binary leaves no middle ground. It reminds us that there are two types of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who do not.
But the binary is not about truth and falsehood, or really any ideology at all. It is about the possibility of making choices which...Read more...
We began the seven Haftarot of Nechama today with Nachamu. It will take us all of the way until Rosh Hashana. The series comes from one Navee, one prophet, Yishayahu. But it does not move through his messages sequentially. It largely does but it skips around a bit. This caught the attention of R’ Mordechai Yafe, the Levush, in the 16th century, and he shared something he found from the...Read more...
The speech that begins with Devarim is well known to us. We know how long the speech was, and where it was delivered. But I want to ask what seems to be a painfully obvious question: Who is the audience for this speech?
It should be clear whom Moshe Rebenu is addressing. The entire previous generation should be gone now. The Midrash describes a Tisha B’Av ritual. Each year, on the...Read more...
The Three Weeks are about what has transpired initially to prevent the nation from entering Eretz Yisrael and then what led to the loss of Eretz Yisrael. We also always read these Parshiot, which are about preparation to go into Eretz Yisrael, during the Three Weeks. They give us a sense of the standard against which we are measured till this day. There are many aspects raised here, but I want to concentrate on the...Read more...
