Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Behar – Behukotay For the children of Israel are servants to Me; they are My servants, whom I took out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord, your God. (Vayikra 25:55) You shall not make false gods for yourselves, nor shall you set up a statue or a monument for yourselves. And in your land you shall not place a pavement stone on which to prostrate yourselves, for I am the Lord, your God....
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Emor And you shall count for yourselves, from the morrow of the rest day from the day you bring the omer as a wave offering seven weeks; they shall be complete. (Vayikra 23:15) The reason why the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded the counting of the Omer was so that every man in Israel was busy with his own harvest and each was in his own granary, and they would forget to make the festival...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Achary Mot – Kedoshim And Aaron shall place lots upon the two he goats: one lot "For the Lord," and the other lot, "For Azazel." (Vayikra 16:8) …regarding this I think it more correct that the two goats alluded to the entire Israelite community, but in different senses. When they were good and upright, following their God and cleaving to Him, then they will be for the Lord. Their sacrificed portions and inner parts,...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Tazria – Metzora When you come to the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as a possession, and I place a lesion of tzara'at upon a house in the land of your possession. (Vayikra 14:34) …tzara'at of houses is one of the things described in the Torah that lack any relation to actual reality. It is precisely because lesions of houses are very strange – one might say supernatural – that the details mentioned...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Shmini I will be sanctified through those near to Me …One may, perhaps, go even further and say: The pious believer who was not there but meekly submits, not to his own destruction, but to that of six million of his brethren, insults with his faith the faith of the concentration camps. The k'doshim, who affirmed their faith in the God of Israel in the light of the doom that surrounded them may well say to...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Tzav – Pesach And he slaughtered , and Moses took some of its blood, and placed it on the cartilage of Aaron's right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot. (Vayikra 8:23) The shalshelet marks a break between words and it always appears towards the beginning of a verse, over a verb conjugated in the singular. It comes to tell us that the subject of the...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Vayikra When a person from you brings a sacrifice to the Lord; from animals, from cattle or from the flock you shall bring your sacrifice. (Vayikra 1:2) Adam – Why is this term used here? Just as Adam, the first man, never offered sacrifices from stolen property, since everything was his, so too, you must not offer sacrifices from stolen property. (Rashi Vayikra 1:2, based on Judaica Press translation) Adam includes converts who...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Vayakhel-Pekuday Then all the wise hearted people of the performers of the work made the Tabernacle out of ten curtains of twisted fine linen, and blue, purple, and crimson wool. A cherubim design, the work of a master weaver he made them. (Shemot 36:8) Wise-hearted The appellation wise-hearted refers to wisdom that belongs to a person as his second nature and whose forms govern his heart at all times, of which it was written when...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Ki Tissa And Moses said to the Lord: "Look, You say to me: 'Bring this people up!' But You have not informed me whom You will send with me. And You said: 'I have known you by name and you have also found favor in My eyes.' And now, if I have indeed found favor in Your eyes, pray let me know Your ways, so that I may know You, so that I may find favor in...
Shabbat Shalom The weekly parsha commentary (link to original page) Click here to receive the weekly parsha by email each week. Parshat Tetzave You shall make a breast piece of judgment, worked into a design make it in the style of the ephod, make it in the style of the ephod, of gold, blue, purple, and crimson wool, and twisted fine linen shall you make it. (Shemot 28:15) You shall make a breast piece of judgment, worked into a design – Scripture mentions design only with regard to the ephod and the breast piece, because it denotes that...