Last week, we finished the Chumash of Shemos and learned about the construction of the Mishkan. Much effort and very much cooperation was involved in that difficult but necessary and important process. We were able to appreciate the ethical and spiritual benefits of giving, of the importance of the participation of every individual if a community, however large and gifted, is to achieve its goals.
The Jewish calendar is punctuated by many happy occasions. The Torah requires us to celebrate three major festivals—Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot—and to do so joyously. Our Sages instituted two additional festive holidays, Chanukah and Purim. Without question, it is this latter holiday that evokes the greatest exhibitions of joy and gaiety. Already at the time of its inception, the 14th day of Adar is described as "a day of merrymaking and feasting, as a holiday and an occasion for sending gifts to one another."
We live in a world of cell phones and e-mails, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. We have no privacy, for almost anyone can reach us wherever we are, whatever we happen to be doing, at all times of the day. And we can have no secrets, because anyone who knows anything about us can spread it to the entire world in a matter of seconds.
We live in a world of cell phones and e-mails, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. We have no privacy, for almost anyone can reach us wherever we are, whatever we happen to be doing, at all times of the day.
I often get questioned about the title I’ve given to this ongoing weekly column. “Who is the person in the parsha?” readers ask. The answer takes me back to the time many years ago when I began to write the column. My original intention was to focus on a person in the Torah’s narrative who frequently is ignored by most commentators and who rarely appear in sermons from rabbinic pulpits. Devorah, Rebecca’s nursemaid, is one such example, and another is Ahaliav ben Achisamach, the amazingly skilled artisan who deserves our admiration for his role in crafting the aesthetic grandeur of the Mishkan.
“Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek!” “Be strong, be strong, and we will be strong!” The weekly portion we read this week is Parshat Pekudei (Exodus 38:21-40:38), which comprises the concluding chapters of Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus. As the ba’al koreh, the Torah reader, approaches the final verses, we stand. And when he pronounces the last words, we exclaim loudly and with dramatic flourish: “Chazak, chazak…,” “Be strong, be strong…”
"Words, words, words!", he shouted at me. He was a young man, raised as an observant Jew, but now in rebellion against his traditional upbringing. His parents had asked me to meet with him for several sessions to see if I could at least temper his rebellious spirit, and perhaps even convince him to return to the path they desired him to follow.
It was a cold and wintry day, about this time of year, when I paid a visit to a small Jewish community in the Midwest. The rabbi of the local synagogue invited me to join him for the afternoon prayer service, Mincha.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, (Exodus 35:1-38:20) begins on a familiar note. After all, it was just last week, on Purim, that we read Queen Esther’s dramatic response to Mordechai’s request that she personally intervene with King Achashverosh on behalf of the Jewish people. Initially, as you will surely remember, she is quite hesitant to accede to his request.
His name was Rabbi Simcha Zissel Levovitz, of blessed memory. He had studied in the famed Lithuanian yeshivot, witnessed their destruction, and escaped the Holocaust. He reached the shores of America just a few years before I was privileged to experience his tutelage.
You have surely noticed the great changes in the way charitable causes do their fundraising these days. There was a time when fundraisers, who often were themselves dignified and prestigious rabbinical figures, knocked on the doors of potential philanthropists in the hope that they would not be turned away.
We were walking down the long airport corridor on the way to the boarding gate. Somehow, it seems that whenever my wife and I have a flight to catch, anywhere, our gate is always at the furthest end of the long hall. We had plenty of time until the airplane departed, but somehow I experience an urgent need to rush whenever I am in an airport, and so we were in a hurry.
Since my childhood, I have been an avid reader. When I first discovered the joy of reading, I read everything I could get my hands on. Even today, my taste in reading is very eclectic. However, there is at least one genre of literature that I seem to avoid.
What is life all about? One answer to that question is that life is all about beginnings and endings.
It was over 40 years ago, but I remember the feelings very well. They were overwhelming, and were not dispelled easily.
Times were very different then. When one of our books was torn, we didn't junk it. We took it to a little shop where a bookbinder rebound it.
She was a Hindu princess. She was one of the brightest students in my graduate school class. We studied psychology, and she went on to return to her country and become a psychotherapist of world renown. For our purposes, I shall refer to her as Streena.
As a person who likes to see the connections between the Jewish calendar of holiday celebrations and the weekly Torah reading, I have long been perplexed by the proximity of Purim to this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35).