The story is told of a person who came to shul on Yom Kippur, and when it came time for vidui, the confession, the rabbi noticed that he was banging with both his fists on his chest, like Tarzan. (Unlike the custom we have to bang with one fist on the heart, as if to…
The Midrash says that there were two reshayim who were partners in crime their entire lives. One of them died and went to Gehenom. He was suffering there for many months, and then he saw his former partner’s neshama being escorted into Gan Eden. So he calls over the malach appointed over Gehenom and says…
In three places in the Torah we find a particular concern with modesty. Firstly, the mishkan: It was covered with three layers of material, including a veil in front and a train in back, like a bride. In this context, modesty certainly cannot mean the covering of something dirty or evil; the mishkan was a…
The Midrash teaches that HaShem used the Torah as the blueprint for creating the world; meaning that whatever exists in the world exists in the way it does only because it first of all exists in the Torah. By the same token, whatever is found in the Torah has its concrete expression in the physical…
Two questions: Why is it that these parshiyos, which are almost entirely concerned with tsora’as, begin with the parsha of laidah, of giving birth? Secondly, the opening phrase, isha ki tazriah v’yalda zachar, makes it sound as if conception is followed immediately by birth. Why doesn’t the Torah mention the nine months of pregnancy in…
In the Haggadah, Rabbi Yehudah divides the The Ten Plagues into three groups. Each one of these groups represents a different component of Egyptian nationhood destroyed by the Yad HaShem. The first three, represented by the acronym DaTzaCh (dam, tsefardaya, kinim), concern the affliction of the Nile and the land of Egypt, which formed the…
The Gemora says that HaShem told Moshe to make the Mishkan, and afterwards the keilim; but when Moshe transmitted the instructions to Betzalel, he reversed the order, putting the keilim first, and then the Mishkan. Betzalel objected, that that’s not the way of the world; first a person builds a house, then puts in the…
The story is told of a person who came to a rav to ask him what to do with a large quantity of very expensive liquor that he had forgotten to sell before Pesach. They rav told him that the liquor was forbidden and that he would have to spill it all out. The man…
We live in a world where many times we are forced to witness the desecration of the things which are most holy to us. Why do these things happen? The answer is that when we don’t treat holy things with the proper respect, they become vulnerable to desecration at the hands of the goyim. The…
The following talk was given in the wake of the Boruch Goldstein massacre in Hebron on Purim ‘94, but its theme remains painfully relevant. Even though there is a gemora that says “the best of the goyim, kill,” the rishonim and acharonim are very clear that, unless he is threatening your life, you cannot just…